Jim Currie’s conservation journey evolved amid the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

The Category 5 storm that washed away his coastal home, made landfall about 20 miles south of Woodland Cottage Farms, the forest and farmland he purchased in Hancock County a few years prior. 

Before the hurricane ravaged his land, Jim and his wife Laura had spent thousands of dollars and un-totaled hours eradicating native understory plants to reestablish longleaf pine. Jim then had an epiphany. It was the soil and groundcover, not the mangled trees, that were the true long-term occupiers of the site. 

He was inspired to take his conservation efforts to a higher level. 

Following a 20-year career in Belize, Jim came home and purchased the first of 17 parcels in 2000. His 1,175 acres range from old dairy pastures to former paper company forests, high ground and lowlands, overgrown forests and areas that were clear cut. 

Jim was inspired by Reed Noss’ Forgotten Grasslands of the South. With the help of the farm’s caretaker, Craig Saucier, they utilize prescribed fire to manage a pine-grassland ecosystem. Prescribed fire during the winter and growing season reestablishes a diverse understory of grasses that supports a wide array of wildlife. 

Fire-maintained longleaf pine ecosystems once dominated the Southeast, but declined to just 3.4 million acres due to deforestation, forest fragmentation, and fire exclusion. That figure has rebounded to 5.2 million acres thanks to the efforts of landowners like Jim, who has served on the Mississippi Prescribed Fire Council and formed a local prescribed fire mentoring program. 

Jim’s commitment to conservation includes investing in the purchase of a Flail Vac seed harvester. The hydraulically powered rotary brush collects native seeds that are used to reseed other areas with degraded understories. 

In his book, Game Management, Aldo Leopold wrote, “game can be restored by the creative use of the same tools which have heretofore destroyed it – axe, plow, cow, fire and gun.” Jim routinely uses each of these to enhance wildlife habitats on his property. 

In 2018 he began grazing a herd of Mississippi Pineywoods cattle to mimic the soil disturbance once created by bison. This heritage cattle breed known for its foraging skills is believed to have grazed this region since the 1500s. Although still relatively rare, the breed of cattle is gaining popularity for its ability to help restore longleaf pine ecosystems. 

Jim sells heifer calves as breeding stock, and sells steers to a local processor. The combination of timber and cattle sales as a business model was once common across Mississippi’s coastal plain. Wood poles, pulpwood, sawtimber, and pine straw are sold from the forests. Each of these revenue streams fund the land management activities at Woodland Cottage Farms. 

Today, Jim lives in Pass Christian, and regularly educates and inspires others by hosting workshops and field days. His farm attracts a diverse mix of wildlife, including rare crayfish species and the federally threatened gopher tortoises. It also hosts ponds where the endangered dusky gopher frog has been released as part of a relocation effort led by the Memphis Zoo and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Jim was featured in the Southeast Emmy Award-winning documentary, It’s a Journey, discussing the linkage of land conservation practices to the Gulf of Mexico’s water quality.

Casey Anderson of the Mississippi Forestry Association said, “Very few landowners personify the land ethic that Aldo Leopold sought to instill more fully than Jim Currie.”