Conservancy Acquires Key Tract Buffering Historic Church

100-acre tract located across from the St. James Santee Church

Charleston, SC—27 April 2006—The Nature Conservancy has purchased an ecologically and historically significant 100-acre tract in eastern Charleston County. The tract is within the Conservancy’s Sewee to Santee landscape project area, a vast region surrounding the Francis Marion National Forest, Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, and the Santee River Delta. The Conservancy purchased the property, located across from the St. James Santee Church (ca. 1768), from P. O. Mead III for $600,000.00.

The property is dominated by three principal plant communities: longleaf pine flatwoods, longleaf pine wet savannah, and bay forest-pocosin. Longleaf pine forests, the dominant historical forest type of the Southeast Coastal Plain, have been reduced from 90 million acres to some 3 million acres. The Sewee to Santee region serves as one of the last remaining strongholds for this critically imperiled habitat, supporting hundreds of native plant and animal species—some nationally rare and endangered.

“Due to the property’s unique conservation values and its strategic location relative to the St. James Santee Church, we sincerely appreciate Mr. Mead’s efforts in working with the Conservancy to protect this important tract,” said Michael Prevost, The Nature Conservancy’s Sewee to Santee Project Director. “Acquisition of this property affords an extraordinary opportunity to enhance restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem while conserving the integrity of the landscape surrounding one of America’s most historically important rural churches.” Maintained as a nature preserve, the property will be managed principally through a prescribed fire regime designed to enhance the fire-dependent longleaf pine ecosystem, complementing nearby lands of the Francis Marion National Forest.

The St. James Santee Church was the worship place of signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, including Thomas Lynch, Jr., whose family owned extensive eighteenth-century rice plantations in the Santee Delta. “Designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1972 and known locally as the ‘Brick Church,’ St. James Santee is one of the most architecturally important structures in the South Carolina Lowcountry,” said William McG. Morrison, Jr., Co-Chair of the Brick Church Preservation Committee. “Since our Church doors opened to the Huguenots and the Anglicans in our Santee community, this is certainly the most important and valuable enhancement of this beautiful colonial church that has taken place in our 300-year history.”

“Having protected nearly 40,000 acres in the Sewee to Santee landscape, including some 1,300 acres in the vicinity of the Church, we are pleased to be working with the Brick Church Committee and members of St. James Santee Parish to ensure long-term conservation of the region,” added Prevost.