Latimore Smith

November 19, 2020

Latimore is truly a child of the piney woods, descended from folk that lived amongst the virgin longleaf pines and then farmed the land after it was cleared of pine. Growing up as a young boy on a dairy farm in the historic longleaf piney woods of southeast Louisiana, he clearly remembers being drawn to those majestic straight arrow trees with their boughs bearing pom-poms of long pine needles. Those early formative years deeply influenced his life’s path and led directly to his great fortune of working over most of his professional career with other passionate people to help protect and restore a bit of the incredible habitat called longleaf pine. In 1974, he received his B.S. in Biology from Southeastern Louisiana University, and in 1983, he received an M.S. in Wildlife Science from Louisiana State University. His professional career began as Conservation Ecologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Natural Heritage Program (LNHP) for 15 years, where he had one of the best jobs a young piney woods field biologist can have, seeking out, among other things, the best remaining examples of longleaf pine habitats in the state. In 2000, Latimore joined The Nature Conservancy in Louisiana where he coordinated planning and implementation of restoration actions on thousands of acres of TNC properties state-wide, but mainly on rare longleaf pine flatwood wetlands. In March of 2018, Latimore moved on from TNC and started a conservation consulting firm he named Southern Wild that will have a primary focus of longleaf pine conservation and restoration.