Splinter Hill Bog Preserve

With approximately 1,900 acres, The Nature Conservancy’s Splinter Hill Bog Preserve provides a place where animals and plants can safely spread out and, hopefully, thrive. This amenity came in handy over the summer when a building contractor from another part of the state, and familiar with TNC's work, inquired about relocating five gopher tortoises living at a project site.

“Since gopher tortoises are a state-threatened species here, and federally threatened in two Alabama counties, you can’t build if they are found on a property,” says Rob Wood, TNC’s coastal fire program coordinator in Alabama. “Luckily we have everything they need here at the preserve.”

In fact, gopher tortoises already inhabit a portion of the north end of the preserve. This is a population that has a long history of living in the area’s ideal combination of an open, grassy landscape interspersed with longleaf pines growing in sandy soils favored by the tortoises for extensive burrows where they spend most of their time. 

“All of the right elements are here at Splinter Hill,” adds Wood. “We just keep an eye on things and maintain the habitat with periodic fire that mimics what once naturally occurred across the landscape.”

Now, in the south side of the property, the contractor is building a five-acre enclosure and a starter burrow with help from TNC and oversight by a state wildlife biologist to ensure the preserve’s new residents get off to a strong start. TNC will maintain the area for two years while the tortoises settle in.

“Gopher tortoises are an important keystone species, with deep burrows that support hundreds of species in addition to themselves,” says Wood. “We are proud to be stewards of a place where they can exist as they are meant to, and away from where urban sprawl was pushing farther and farther into their world.”