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The Rangeland Technology and Equipment Council (RTEC) is an informal organization of land managers, engineers, researchers, academics, and private industry representatives interested in developing new rehabilitation equipment and strategies. RTEC has a long history of holding an annual, practical workshop on the Sunday preceding the start of the SRM meeting.  The focus of the workshop this year is on the longleaf pine ecosystem which was once the dominant forest community in the South covering over 140,000 square miles from southern Virginia to east Texas.  There is currently less than 3% of that original forest remaining.  Over the past 100 years, forest was lost to tree harvesting and conversion to other pine species, agriculture, urbanization, and a lack of understanding about how to manage this type of fire dependent forest.  A renewed interest across the region over the past twenty years has led to a range wide effort to protect the remaining forest, convert other forest types back to longleaf, and to restore non-forest land.  A diverse, healthy understory component and fire are two critical and interrelated management tools necessary for maintaining a vigorous longleaf pine forest. This RTEC session will focus on: 1) The use of fire or fire surrogates to maintain/enhance existing forests, and 2) Techniques, equipment, and native plant materials to restore degraded or former forest areas.  Interaction and sharing lessons learned will be integrated into this half-day workshop.