A hurricane's silver lining.

The pines are gone, her yard is a virtual desert, but now Pam Hendriksen knows the value of trees and is working hard to bring them back.

LIVING THROUGH A VIOLENT hurricane can be a life-changing experience. Hurricane Andrew roared through south Florida August 24, 1992, its winds of 150 miles per hour flattening forests and snapping trees like toothpicks. It cut a swath of massive destruction 30 miles wide.

Sometimes, however, good things grow out of tragedy. For Pamela Hendriksen, the storm left in its wake a new appreciation of trees, a sense of stewardship toward the land, and an understanding of the role of native tree species in the urban forest.

Twenty-two months before the hurricane, newlyweds Pam and Keith Hendriksen had found the ideal piece of land on which to build their dream home. The property, 1.58 acres of native slash pine, is in a rural section of Dade County, Florida, 20 minutes from Miami.

Two days before signing on the dotted line, the couple encountered a snag. When Pam called the county to ask about cutting trees, she learned that the land is protected as a native Florida pineland. A deed restriction prohibits clearing more than 20 percent of their property.

"I was devastated to find out that I wouldn't be allowed to do what I wanted with my property," recalls Hendriksen. "I was angry, thinking that someone was taking something away from us."

The couple almost decided against the purchase, but their lawyer advised them t proceed. Pam is a bookkeeper for a plumbing company, and Keith is an electrician, as is his father and Pam's father. Bolstered by all this construction know-how, the couple built a two-bedroom beach-style home on concrete stilts so that the living area would catch the breezes. The roof has a four-foot overhang for shade, and a rear porch runs the full width. Before the hurricane, Pam could sit on the porch and watch cardinals and red-cockaded woodpeckers at a bird feeder and, down below, wildlife like marsh cottontail rabbits, raccoons, and red and gray foxes.

The Hendriksens returned to their home four hours after the end of the storm. They saw that their house would have to be totally reconstructed, but what really affected Pam was the destruction of the forest.

"How thick those pine trees were," she remembers, "and we returned to a virtual desert."

Today, the Hendriksen home has been rebuilt as good as new. But the forest is not as easy to bring back. The skyline of Dade County remains dead. Brown skeletons of pines that snapped in half resemble a graveyard as far as the eye can see. With no forest and no shade, it is too hot to spend time outside.

The hurricane changed Pam's life. She began attending seminars about the importance of the pinelands. Her mother, who recently received a degree in environmental studies, became her mentor, helping her acquire knowledge of the nearly extinct south Florida slash pine.

Pam learned that the slash pine is a component of the pine rocklands ecosystem, which has more than 200 plant and wildlife species. Even though the adult trees are gone, the pine rocklands are still there and worth saving. The remaining fragments of this ecosystem, which the state lists as critically imperiled, serve as miniature islands for wildlife and numerous rare and threatened species. The more of these islands that are wiped out, the less chance the plants and animals have to survive. Some of the species found on Pam's land are extremely rare, such as the Cycadaceae Zamia pumila, a low-growing fern-like coontie plant that serves as food for the Florida atala butterfly caterpillar (Eumaeus atala), which is a candidate for inclusion on the U.S. list of threatened species.

As a result of the hurricane, Pam began to write about the pine rocklands and became politically active in a fight to save a nearby six-acre tract threatened by development.

"Keith and I are glad now that we went ahead with the purchase of our land," says Pam, "because we realize that we're helping to save part of something that is being destroyed every day." The Hendriksens now recognize the importance of tree ordinances that help reduce the impact of urban development.

The Florida Division of Forestry is helping Dade County residents decide what t do about the future. Foresters Gene Dempsey and Arthur Clothier note that the Hendriksen property is unusual in that the pine loss was entirely caused by direct storm mortality. The destruction was comparable to the loss that took place in the area nearest the eye of the hurricane, where 90 to 100 percent of the tree canopy was destroyed. In other parts of the hurricane area, a major factor was post-storm mortality from heavy equipment during the clean-up, subsequent stress from exposure to the harsh Florida sun, and an outbreak of th ips bark beetle. It is believed that pine bark beetles account for more damage to Southern timber than any other type of insect.

Today, with the loss of over-story trees, the Hendriksen property has been overrun by Burma reed grass (Neyraudia reynaudiana), an invasive exotic that crowds out native species. Burma reed is fire-tolerant, meaning, for one thing, that burning it off makes it come back stronger. Pam hand cuts it and then uses a herbicide to kill the grass when it resprouts. This labor-intensive approach has saved pine saplings and palmettos that were almost buried under the grass and barely hanging on. Pam is monitoring the saplings for pine weevils, which attack trees that are under stress.

"Pam is a very dedicated landowner," Clothier says. "But nature is kind of slow sometimes, even when you're helping it along." He notes that the game plan at this point is to continue eradication of the Burma reed and then in a year or two to begin interplanting pine seedlings, once the weevil populations decline.

In the meantime, Florida authorities are collecting seeds from living trees and considering genetic studies to determine whether the south Florida slash pine (Pinus elliottii, var. densa) is a distinct species. Regenerating the slash pin will be a painstaking and lengthy process.

Replanting in Dade County's more urban areas, however, began as soon as homes had been rebuilt. Rather than slash pine, which is not suitable for urban areas other native species and a few exotics are being recommended. In addition to homeowners like Pam Hendriksen's heightened appreciation of trees, another positive outcome of Hurricane Andrew will be an improved urban forest.

The Florida Division of Forestry and the state's Federation of Garden Clubs hav worked together to plant approximately 300 trees at schools so that students will have shaded playgrounds. The garden clubs raised $17,538, which was matche by federal funds.

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION NATURAL RESOURCE ASSESSMENT DADE COUNTY, FL

Owner                   Keith and Pam Hendriksen
Address                 SW 162 Ave.
Hurricane Damage        Heavy damage
Insect Damage           Ips bark beetle
Native Vegetation       Live oak/Baldcypress
Endangered Vegetation   Burma reed grass
Exotic Vegetation       Zamia pumila
Endangered Animals      Florida atala butterfly

Major support for reforestation was also provided by Florida Power and Light, which donated $225,000 through "We Will Rebuild," a nonprofit created to suppor a variety of restoration efforts. AMERICAN FORESTS provided technical oversight to the We Will Rebuild reforestation efforts.

"Everywhere you go in south Dade County, you see trees popping up," says Gene Dempsey, who is the urban forestry coordinator for the Everglades District of the Florida Division of Forestry.

"Some trees identified themselves as wind hardy," says Dempsey, adding that unofficial damage surveys suggest that native species held up better than exotics did. For example, exotics of the Ficus family, such as weeping figs and banyan trees, blew over because their aerial roots had been removed. Aerial roots grow earthward from horizontal branches, supporting the limbs so that a tree can spread over large areas. Homeowners who did not want the aerial roots in their yards had removed them, leaving the crowns unbalanced and top-heavy.

Eucalyptus, being fast-growing trees, are brittle, and they also broke up in th storm. Black olives, which are native to the Florida Keys but are considered possibly a naturalized species in Dade County, tended to blow over very readily

Other exotics such as royal poinciana trees (Delonix regia) and Norfolk Island pines (Araucaria excelsa) performed fairly well. The Norfolk pines were sheared of all their branches, but since the trunks are flexible, many of the tops survived. As the trees put out stubby new branches, the overall effect resemble fish skeletons. The same thing happened to Norfolk pines in Hawaii that survive Hurricane Iniki.

Florida native species such as live oaks (Quercus virginiana) lost limbs, but their primary structure survived. Bald-cypress (Taxodium distichum) also withstood the storm very well. Other natives such as pigeon plums (Coccoloba diversifolia) and sea grapes (Coccoloba uviferia) blew over but then rooted themselves. Dempsey notes that these natives are therefore more appropriate for replanting in natural settings such as coastal dunes than for landscaping residential areas.

"We want a variety of species, because we don't want a live-oak-dominated canopy," says Dempsey. Even the live oaks did not do well, he notes, when planted in parking-lot islands or other small sites without adequate root space "One of our main goals when replanting is to place the right tree in the right place."

Generally, that means native species since they are better adapted to south Florida's coral rock soils, where an auger is often required to dig planting holes. Natives are also better adapted to the harsh climate and require less care in terms of water and fertilizer.

The problem with planting natives, however, is the current shortage of nursery stock. During the 1950s and 1960s, when Florida was undergoing intense development, the emphasis was on exotics and palm trees. Today the market for natives is growing, but local supplies are devastated. Ninety percent of the Dade County nursery industry was located in the hardest hit area and lost most of its stock. Nor is it possible to go to nurseries in the rest of the state because the local species cannot grow outside Dade County.

The native species are slow growing, so it may be many years before Pam Hendriksen's home is shaded. In the meantime, she is sad that most of the wildlife has not yet returned--with one striking exception.

"Two weeks ago, when I was on my way to work and going down the stairs," she says, "I looked to the north and saw a large bird circling a couple of dead pines that remain standing. I was awestruck. I had never seen such a large bird before. It landed in a tree, and I drove down to see what it was."

It was a bald eagle.

TOUGHEST TREES: NATIVES OR EXOTICS?

Which trees stand up best to hurricanes, ice storms, drought, and other acts of God? Trees are big investments, and the wise homeowner will want to plant species that are most likely to survive natural disasters. Unfortunately, the answer is far from simple.

As the accompanying article suggests, native trees in south Florida generally outperformed exotics in terms of wind hardiness. Some species have evolved special adaptations such as the ability to re-root themselves after being blown over. Natives also tend to be better adapted to survive local climactic conditions, such as recurrent drought, and are more likely to be resistant to insects and diseases.

Under the harsh conditions of urban environments, however, a number of other factors affect survival. Only the toughest trees can survive an environment tha has been described as "spartan" by Gary Moll, vice president for urban forestry at AMERICAN FORESTS, in his book, Shading Our Cities. In some cases, natives ma do as well as exotics in surviving urban air pollution, compacted soils, vandalism, excessive pruning, the reduced hours of sunlight in a city's concret caverns, and the hot, dry conditions that result from the urban heat-island effect. But in an environment so unfriendly to life, exotics often outperform native trees.

The homeowner who wishes to plant the best trees to survive natural calamities will have to select species that can withstand day-in and day-out harsh treatment.

"Regardless of which you choose," says Cheryl Kollin, AMERICAN FORESTS' directo of urban forestry, "you have to be sure that it's well adapted to the local microclimate, soil conditions, rainfall patterns, and the urban stresses of you planting site. In the rural fringes or a quiet residential area, what you choos will be very different from what you select if you're planting in the downtown commercial core. "

Norah Davis, former managing editor of American Forests, writes on natural-resources issues from her home in Washington, DC.