None The Nature Conservancy in South Carolina Press Releases Search All Press Releases Mark Robertson Phone: (803) 254-9049 E:mail: mrobertson@tnc.org

A Banner Year for The Nature Conservancy

in South Carolina

Columbia, South Carolina - The Nature Conservancy of South Carolina has confirmed 2007 as one of the group’s most successful years to date.

Last year TNC protected 28,600 acres in the state, an area about the size of Greenville and Spartanburg combined. The group secured purchases and easements in nearly all of its priority landscapes. From the Blue Ridge to the Lowcountry, TNC completed a record 41 real estate closings — 22 in December alone — by far the most the group has ever completed in a single year. The Conservancy added 23 new conservation easements, protecting 23,000 acres (out of the 28,575). The chapter now holds 129 conservation easements in protecting about 95,000 acres. 

Two key factors that directly related to this success was the 2007 income tax deduction increase for the donations of conservation easements and receiving more than $14 million in public grants from the South Carolina Conservation Bank. 

In the ACE Basin, TNC capped off a year that included five donated conservation easements, four “bargain purchase” conservation easements, and a donation of 600 acres of upland and wetland habitat. Known as the Bonnie Doone tract, the Colleton County property was purchased by a developer and donated to TNC, adding to the existing mosaic of conservation properties already in the ACE Basin. Restoration of this land will benefit the flatwoods salamander, which is considered federally threatened and is protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The Piedmont saw TNC’s first acquisition in Abbeville County, where TNC protected 171 acres on Long Cane Creek, for eventual inclusion in Sumter National Forest.

The Stumphouse Mountain purchase — a group effort completed with the help of state agencies, local conservation groups, elected officials and Oconee county residents — was the capstone of Southern Blue Ridge conservation last year.  In addition, TNC protected nearly 2,000 acres at the Asbury Hills Methodist Camp, through a conservation easement, a site critical to the celebrated Caesars Head State Park viewshed. Acreage in the Southern Blue Ridge Escarpment is prized by conservation groups, as it provides a habitat for more than 40 percent of the plants on the South Carolina rare plants list, despite comprising less than two percent of the state’s land area. It is also home to many rare animals, including wood frogs, native brook trout, and peregrine falcons.

 In the Sewee to Santee region, which extends along nearly 40 miles of South Carolina’s undeveloped coastline from Dewees Inlet north of Charleston to Winyah Bay, TNC completed seven transactions in 2007 to protect nearly 3,000 acres. This area is threatened by the conversion of forestland to urban use, jeopardizing a habitat for wintering and migrating ducks, shorebirds and seabirds, as well as a nursery habitat for fish, crabs, shrimp and oysters. So far TNC has protected 37,137 acres in this region and will continue to work with public and private organizations to use conservation easements, acquisitions and other tools to preserve the area’s ecological integrity.

In the Savannah River/South Lowcountry region, TNC stepped up its efforts, which so far have protected 34,336 acres. This area — rich with longleaf pine sandhills, bottomland hardwood forests, cypress-tupelo swamps, savannas, and the northern border of the Savannah River — faces an increasing coastal population and a number of invasive species. These and other factors pose risks to the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, numerous rare orchid species, and the federally threatened flatwoods salamander. Private landowners protected 14,203 acres with the assistance of TNC and the SC Conservation Bank, ensuring these areas of the Savannah River Basin are kept intact and protect this important drinking water source.

In the Winyah Bay/Pee Dee region, which covers 525,000 acres reaching from Georgetown to the North Carolina border and west up the Black, Lynches, Little and Great Pee Dee Rivers, TNC completed four transactions in 2007 to protect over 3,000 acres. Two transactions were conservation easements that together protected some 1,800 acres of relatively undisturbed bottomland hardwood swamp. Such forests provide excellent stop-over habitat for migratory songbirds such as the American redstart. TNC has protected over 57,000 acres in that region including Sandy Island, the largest undeveloped freshwater island on the East coast.  The Winyah Bay/Pee Dee region has the third largest estuarine drainage area on the Eastern Seaboard, converging from the Black, Great Pee Dee, Little Pee Dee, Sampit and Waccamaw rivers in Georgetown County.

Including the 2007 transactions, The Nature Conservancy of South Carolina has now protected 314,900 acres — an area about 15 times the size of Manhattan.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.