Conserving a 100,000-acre Cross-State Corridor

Fifty miles northwest of Atlanta, rolling Appalachian foothills and scenic valleys host habitats and species found nowhere else in the world. The 100,000-acre region is known as the Dugdown Corridor. It's the anchor of the Southern Appalachian mountains and a critical conservation priority for The Nature Conservancy and our partners.

About the Dugdown Corridor

The corridor's clear, cool rivers and streams are some of the most diverse freshwater systems in the Southeast U.S. It’s also home to one of the last remaining vestiges of montane (mountain) longleaf pine ecosystems. This abundance of forest and fresh water creates a vital migratory passage for a range of wildlife species.

But over the last 200 years, agroforestry changed the terrain. Land was purchased and converted into pine plantations, leaving native forests fragmented and overharvested. Natural fire—which many pine species need to thrive—was suppressed. These combined challenges almost wiped out the mountain longleaf pine, making the remaining forest more vulnerable and isolating native wildlife populations.

The Road to Recovery: A Story of Cross-State Conservation

Since the 1980s, communities, state agencies and local organizations have rallied to protect and restore the unique forests and freshwater of the Dugdown Corridor. Conservation efforts here can be traced to the creation of Sheffield Wildlife Management Area, beginning with the Georgia Department of Natural Resource’s initial purchase of a few thousand acres in Paulding County. This protected natural area grew steadily throughout the 1990s, gaining additional traction in the early 2000s when voters allocated SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) dollars to protect more land. The resulting purchase created an adjacent protected area, Paulding Forest, bringing the total of the two areas to almost 20,000 acres.

Freshwater Restoration in the Corridor

Land protection in the corridor aligned with TNC’s freshwater restoration efforts at Raccoon Creek, a stronghold for aquatic biodiversity located within Sheffield Wildlife Management Area. The Nature Conservancy, Georgia Department of Natural Resources (Georgia DNR), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Paulding County joined forces to accelerate land protection efforts, while TNC partnered with private landowners to restore stream banks and replace culverts—pipes or channels used to move water away from structures or property—with bridges that allow fish to move freely between watersheds.

Today, the combined efforts of TNC and local partners have protected more than half of the 35,000 acres in the Raccoon Creek watershed.

The Dugdown Corridor is bounded to the south by the Tallapoosa River, which is home to diverse aquatic wildlife, some of which can only be found in this one river. The river harbors one of the healthiest populations of native mussels in North Georgia, making it a keystone of the corridor. To the east, the Etowah River also ranks among Georgia’s most biodiverse rivers. It is home to 76 native fish species, including Etowah and Cherokee darters, both of which are federally listed, as well as the bronze darter, whose health is a key indicator of clean water and a healthy ecosystem.

Leveraging Success to Scale

While the land protection achieved at Raccoon Creek was substantial, TNC, Georgia DNR, USFWS, Paulding County and other partners realized they had to think bigger to protect not only the watershed but the mountain longleaf pine ecosystems further north. The partnerships and trust they had built provided an opportunity to move from isolated habitats to a larger connectivity project that would benefit both people and nature. They envisioned a stretch of protected lands that would connect the Talladega National Forest in northeast Alabama with Paulding Forest and Sheffield Wildlife Management Areas in northwest Georgia. Smack in the middle of this 100,000-acre corridor is Dugdown Mountain, from which this new project took its name.