By Alena Noakes
KALB-TV
On Friday, Jan. 20, the first saplings of a new Kisatchie National Forest were nestled in the soil of Vernon Parish, an effort to reforest the area after Category 4 Hurricane Laura wiped out 256,000 acres of trees in 2020. Of that acreage, 90,000 were severely impacted, more than 20,000 catastrophically.