Greenburg ? When last month’s tornadoes ripped up Greensburg and other parts of Kansas, the deadly storms also destroyed hundreds of trees, or shelterbelts, planted during the Dust Bowl years to help control wind and erosion.

Local and state officials estimate more than 200 shelterbelts were affected, with more than 10 to 50 miles of trees destroyed in the May storms that destroyed the town of Greensburg and left 13 people dead.

“If they are not replaced you run the risk, particularly in the western part of the state where there is the sandier soils, to once again have the wind erosion,” said Roger Masenthin, Sunflower Resource Conservation and Development coordinator.

But many of the shelterbelts, huge mile-long tree lines, were so old, they don’t qualify for federal programs to replace them. As the storm cleanup continues, those trees may be last on the list, said Rick Snell, Barton County Extension Agent.

“It takes a lot of labor and money to restore those shelterbelts,” Snell said. “More immediate concerns are getting crops planted, harvested, taking care of livestock and buildings … It takes a lifetime to establish those trees.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, rural America was in the midst of an economic depression. Then came the years of drought and wind. To combat the effects of the storms, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated a tree-planting program that could reduce wind erosion on the Great Plains.

Shelterbelts were periodically planted to check the prevailing south and north winds. Trees such as Osage orange, Russian mulberry and hackberry, as well as yellow pine, red cedar and cottonwoods dominated many of the tree lines.

All told, more than 10 million acres of trees were planted in Kansas shelterbelts by the end of the 1930s.

“These trees were primary to settling the ground down in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s,” Masenthin said. “They were established by people’s grandparents and great-grandparents. And, they were established well.”

Kiowa County had more than 15 miles of shelterbelts destroyed by the storms in early May that left 13 people dead, said Jamie Holopirek, the county’s Natural Resources Conservation Service director.

In some places, where the tornadoes were more than a mile wide, there is little hope of salvaging the trees. In those places, nothing remains but shards of tree trunks.

The same holds true for Edwards, Stafford and Barton counties.

“We are going to have to wait and see how much some of them will come back,” Holopirek said. “Some of them were destroyed so bad, they will have to be pushed out. There is so much debris in them, metal and tin from farmsteads. They are completely gone.”