Land Trust Achievements In Perspective…

2009 has been a busy year for the Alabama Land Trust, Chattowah Open Land Trust, the Georgia Land Trust and their affiliate organizations. We’ve blown past our strategic goal of protecting 125,000 acres of land by 2011, instead protecting nearly 156,000 acres by the end of 2009. In this last year alone we’ve protected 38,000 acres of land, breaking our previous record of protection of 35,000 acres in 2007. To give our readers and the conservation-minded public in general a better grasp of how much land we’re talking about, we’d like to try put things in perspective for you.

The 38,000 acres we protected in 2009 is roughly equivalent to 59 square miles of land or an 8 by 7.5 mile box. In that amount of land one could squeeze in 4,175 (with an acre or two to spare), 9.1-acre Georgia Domes. Our total land protected, 156,000 acres, comes out to 243 square miles of land. If you’re familiar with the multi-armed, writhing morass that is the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 243 square miles is nearly the size of DeKalb County, at the heart of the Atlanta metro area. If you’re an Alabaman, 243 square miles is roughly one quarter the size of Jefferson County, or more than 2/3 the size of the entire Birmingham Metropolitan area. And all of this has been protected with a staff of only 13.

What’s most incredible about this accomplishment? The first is that we revisit every acre of land we protect every year. For two months of each year, land trust staff reviews the documents that delineate the land’s protection, fire up their GPS units, unsling their cameras like weapons of war and take to the roads and the air to monitor our protected properties (almost 185 square miles in 2009).

The second incredible thing is the sheer diversity of the habitats, people and situations our land trusts work with to accomplish all this land protection.. Conservation easements in the land trusts’ area of coverage are so far flung that it could take a person 11 hours to drive from one end of the coverage area to the other. Despite that vast range, every single acre of protected land was visited and monitored to ensure the land has been maintained as intended.

These monitoring activities took place while we were protecting a further 59 square miles of land. This means that in 2010, when our land trusts once again take off on their annual monitoring, they will being monitoring 243 square miles as they continue their protection work.

The land area our land trusts operate in is so large and diverse that it stretches from the rocky crags and streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Cumberland Plateau to the coastal Tupelo and Cypress Swamps. They hold easements in the Piedmont, Coastal Plain, Fall Line, and the Blackbelt. In fact, our land trusts hold conservation easements in every ecological region of Alabama and Georgia. (To get a pdf of a beautiful map showing the ecoregions, you can go to the EPA webpage.)

These easements are intended not only to preserve the incredibly diverse flora and fauna of our region, but also the bounteous food and timber its farms and forests provide. In addition to protecting critical habitat, riparian corridors and other environmental assets, our land trusts protect historic family farms, valuable soils, productive forest plantations, hunting lands and more. They work with farmers, foresters, and, in general, landowners concerned with the future of their land.

In fact, landowners have been the biggest reason for the land trusts’ success. Every year dozens of landowners contact our land trusts because of the recommendation of other individuals who have previously protected land with us. Landowners take a big leap in protecting land with us by agreeing to a permanent relationship with the trusts and so far our landowners have been active participants in the protection of their land.

So, the land trusts have been successful so far, and given our efforts to refine our operating procedures, should remain so in the future; however, we can only continue to do so with the help of caring, conservation-minded individuals. If you’d like to learn more about us or are considering protecting your land in 2010, look us up at galandtrust.org. Or if you would like to give us a call you can reach our Northeast Alabama Office at (256) 447-1006; our Columbus, Georgia Office at (706) 662-2211, or our Savannah, Georgia office at (866) 656-5263 or (912) 231-0507.

-Marc-

 

The Most Popular Animal in Georgia

The Most Popular Animal in Georgia

This award for the Most Popular Animal in Georgia is based on an admittedly random and thin sample of landowners who have donated conservation easements to the Georgia Land Trust. The fact that these folks like their land and the critters that dwell there enough to donate a conservation easement adds a bit more weight to the result and anyway, I don’t see how anyone will disagree with it.

Before we announce the Most Popular Animal in Georgia, let’s talk critters generally. One of the great things about working for a land trust is that most of the properties we protect have a bunch of critters.

Not the most popular animal in Georgia; a face only a mother could love. Photo source: Imou<3's photo stream

Not all of them are good or well-loved. You hear some downright disparaging remarks directed at wild pigs, for instance. They have qualities that we admire in humans—they are resourceful, tough, smart and they’re pretty good parents. But, as anyone who’s ever seen the sheer devastation they can wreak on land can attest, they are not an amenity on a property. And, they can be almost mythically scary, hence the numerous “hogzilla” stories that make the rounds.

Coyotes are making downright scary inroads in the state and similar negative commentary. An article in Georgia Outdoor News reports that in 1969 coyotes were only reported in 23 counties. Now they have been reported in all of Georgia’s 159 counties. (Interesting fact about Georgia—2nd largest number of counties after Texas, which has a lot more room to put them in.)  Interestingly, part of the coyotes’ introduction to our state was by fox hunters who thought they would be good subjects for their dogs to pursue. The article forgivingly notes “they were headed this way,” but as is the case with so many exotic invasives, this seems another of those instances of “be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.”

Nice buck; photo source: USFWS

There are other animals that may be loved or less than loved depending on how plentiful they are on a property. Everyone loves sighting deer in the woods and many enjoy venison, “the sustainable meat.” Once subject to unregulated taking, including commercial hunting, the U.S. white tail deer population in the 1930s declined to as low as 300,000 animals. With regulations in place, the population has now rebounded by a couple of orders of magnitude and is estimated at around 30 million animals. And as many a landowner will animatedly aver, that many of anything can occasionally eat themselves out of a home. Still, most of the landowner/donors we work with love them enough that they make sure that supplemental forage plots are in place to ensure that the animals on their land are adequately fed and that they and their guests can enjoy the animals’ grace and maybe a chance to help thin the herd a little.

Other game animals are the subject of admiration and active management to maintain or restore their numbers. The Bobwhite Quail—Georgia’s State Game Bird—uniquely suited to thrive in the great expanses of longleaf pine that greeted settlers to these parts (and across parts of 37 other states, as well) seriously declined as agricultural and silvicultural uses eroded their natural range and habitat.  With more and more landowners reintroducing management aimed at longleaf restoration with native grass understory, the birds are rebounding nicely in many areas, although most hunts still require releasing birds raised off property for the hunt.

Three toms and two hens--somebody will be going home sad. Photo source: jrophoto stream

The Wild Turkey (reputedly Benjamin Franklin’s choice for the national bird—Franklin also had other suggestions for the national critter, citing the rattlesnake “as an appropriate example of the temper and conduct of Americans”) is another comeback species, with its numbers rising nationally from under 2 million in the early 1970s to more than 7 million at present. These big birds are much beloved for their speed across the ground while running, the fact that something that darn big can fly as fast as it does, and for their wariness, which makes them a favorite of hunters. The hunters no doubt are fans of their various vocalizations, listed in Wikipedia as: “gobbles,” “clucks,” “putts,” “purrs,” “yelps,” “cutts,” “whines,” “cackles,” and “kee-kees.”

Wildlife lovers also have long lists of non-game animals they glowingly praise and rapturously describe sighting. We’ve all heard folks lovingly describing bald eagle sightings, which is yet another comeback species story, as the birds are now officially no longer listed on the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants. (They continue to be protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.) Wandering Liberty County near Fort Stewart, I’ve more than once seen the incredibly elegant swallow-tailed kite and even saw a red-cockaded woodpecker on a piece of land our land trust owns near the fort.

Lovers of more terrestrial species, mention sightings of bobcats, bears (reputedly achieving near nuisance status as both their numbers and human population continue to grow in mountainous areas) and I’ve even been told of florida panther sightings in Camden County. (A forester ascribes these sightings to western cougars reintroduced to Florida to try to put something back into the niche once occupied by the Florida Panther, whose numbers now are as low as a hundred animals. Evidently the western cougars were given transmitting collars and one animal roved from near the Evergladesto as far north as Macon, Georgia, before turning around and establishing a temporary base some 175 miles to the south on Georgia’s coast in McIntosh County.)

The elegant indigo snake. Photo source: Summit to the Sea, http://coastgis.marsci.uga.edu/summit/images/logo.jpg

And, of course, there are non-furry terrestrial creatures that draw a good deal of praise. The herpetophiles will rhapsodize on the stalwart gopher tortoise and the elegant indigo snakes that make their homes on some of our sandhills. Poke around in most any little depressional wetland or ephemeral stream and you’ll find all manner of interesting salamanders, including the three-toed salamander, another rare species that finds a special place of refuge near Fort Stewart.

But, we promised you that this article would announce the Most Popular Animal in Georgia so, drum roll, please: the most universally beloved critter is the Fox Squirrel. This conclusion, as noted above is derived from a short, thin sample but that sample featured 66% participation by pecan growers. If there is a group of people one would assume would be the natural enemy of any form of squirrel, that would seem to be pecan growers. Yet when asked about critters on their property, they unhesitatingly offer up the fact that nothing brings them more happiness than just watching the antics of fox squirrels. They also noted that while they’ll allow hunting of most any game animal on their property (including gray squirrels), anyone foolish enough to take a shot at a Fox Squirrel would most assuredly be rapidly asked off the property, never to return.

The Most Popular Animal in Georgia, the Fox Squirrel. This one is the particularly fashionable black cap variety. Photo source: Skipbro's photostream

Part of the squirrels’ charm is that they come in so many varieties of markings. There are black caps, there are silver tufts, there are beautiful reddish brown models. And, of course, there is the fact that they are big—well for squirrels—and their prodigious tails, which makes up about half the critters’ overall length which can reach nearly two feet. (Nobody could claim to mistake a fox squirrel for a gray squirrel either—it would be sort of like mixing up an Airedale with a Jack Russell.)

And, like most squirrels, some of their time seems to be spent in just having fun and appearing cleverer than they are. My favorite sighting of the State’s favorite animal was in a field in Morgan County. Several fox squirrels were seated a short distance from several wild turkey, as if commenting on the birds furious scratching. (The turkey’s comeback has evidently been strong enough that I’ve heard folks say that “they’re getting to be like pigs around here—they can tear a place up.”)

When the birds got done with their digging, the reason for the squirrels’ intent interest became evident—they quickly bounded over to the freshly turned earth just created by the turkeys and set about looking around for treats. You’ve got to admire an animal that is smart enough to let a turkey do the heavy lifting for them. And cute enough to melt a pecan grower’s heart.

 

Places As Yet Undiscovered: The Southern Appalachians

If you were of the opinion that all of the Southern Appalachians had been uncovered, all of its mountain peaks explored and its backwoods hollows inhabited, every plant and an animal found, named, and catalogued; you’d be wrong – at least up until now.

Introduce yourself to the Southern Appalachians most recently discovered species, the patch-nosed salamander, a critter so unique from its salamander cousins it has not only be categorized as a new species of salamander, but an entirely new genus.

It’s truly a remarkable find – the first quadruped vertebrate discovered in the United States in 50 years.  The smallest salamander yet found in the country, this latest addition to the herpetofauna catalog is lungless and displays different color variations amongst males and females—rare amongst amphibians. In the above photo, the black striped salamander with the yellow tail is the male; the “plane jane” is the female. The salamander is lungless and unlike most other salamanders, has 5 toes instead of 4.

The Southern Appalachians is a hotspot of salamander diversity, hosting 60 different species in its mountain streams, vernal pools, creeks, swamps and bogs. Mountain salamander species are caught in a constant process of divergent evolution – two “sister” species of salamanders on neighboring mountains will often have one common ancestor and have, over time, developed new characteristics leading to two separate species.

Most of us are unaware of the number and diversity of the salamanders in the streams of Alabama and Georgia. They’re not that difficult to find. Head for any small cool water stream and start to flip over rocks and logs and you’ll be sure to find one. Take your kids – Some of my favorite early childhood memories are of salamander hunting, always on the lookout for the elusive hellbender in the Eastern Ohio and West Virginia streams where I was raised.

Unfortunately, nearly all of North America’s amphibians are on the decline. They are a very clear “indicator species”—the canary in the canal. Salamanders have a very low pollution tolerance and are unable to survive in warmer temperatures. This is why they mostly stick to mountain streams and coldwater bogs and swamps. Siltation from erosion destroys their habitat. The damming of mountain streams for ponds makes their creeks too warm for them to inhabit.  There is a great fear that as climate change progresses, the mountain brooks of the Southern Appalachians will be too warm to be inhabited by many endemic salamander species and that with so many of these salamanders inhabiting just one mountain or just one stream, an extinction event will take place.

The Alabama Land Trust, Inc. and the Georgia Land Trust, Inc. are proud to work towards the protection of many of suitable salamander habitats across both states. In fact, the core of our protection efforts have taken place in Northern Alabama and Northern Georgia on Sand Mountain, Lookout Mountain and many places along the Cumberland Plateau – home to many of the Southern Appalachians cool running mountain streams.

 

Georgia’s newest lawyer…

Well…maybe not, but he’s still got that new lawyer smell. On June 29th Justin Park, a proud staff member of the land trust, was sworn in as one of Georgia’s newest practitioners of the law.

Everyone here at the land trust is very proud of Justin. Congratulations Justin.

 

817 Acres of Prime Farmland Protected in Reynolds, Georgia

Local landowners have permanently protected their property, conserving it for future generations. Landowners Jack & Linda Fountain have donated a conservation easement to the Georgia Land Trust on their 817 acres near Reynolds, GA.

Under the terms of the conservation easement, the Fountains still own their property and are free to use it in the same way they have in the past, but with limits on how the property may be developed in the future. The conservation easement restricts future residential or commercial development, but allows the Fountains to farm the land and manage the timber on it. At the same time, they’ve set aside their unique hardwood forests and natural areas along the banks of the streams on the property to be protected from any disturbance.

The property, which sits on both Horse and Little Vine Creek, feeds into the Flint River, the most ecologically diverse river east of the Mississippi. The scenic property features pine stands, open pastures, peach orchards, wheat and cotton fields and highly valued bottomland forests filled with several varieties of oak, ash, sweetgum, and hickory. The property contains over 300 acres of state and federally recognized productive soils, which will be protected against conversion to non-agricultural uses.

When asked why he decided to protect his land Dr. Fountain cited his desire to preserve, “some of the southern self-sustaining farm life as I knew it. It is important for me to be able to pass some of this down to my children. Once the traces of this past era are gone, there is no return.” The Fountain’s home on the property was completed in 1904 by Dr. Fountain’s grandfather, who was so particular about the construction of his house that he let not a knotty board be used towards its creation. When asked about his favorite thing about the property Dr. Fountain replied that autumn and spring there “are intoxicating,” reflecting  on the “overwhelming aroma of all the new flowers,” and autumn’s “ marvelous smells in the woods with the crisp air and the rustle of wildlife.”

Marc Hudson of the Georgia Land Trust says, “the Fountain’s decision to put their property under easement adding to its agricultural uses, protecting the farm soils and special protections for their forest bottomlands will go a long way towards protecting an important public resource.” Mr. Hudson also added, “we’re very grateful for the opportunity to protect this property. We feel it is sure to be an anchor and an incentive for future conservation efforts in this area in the future.”

Gifts of conservation easements have the potential to be rewarded with tax deductions on a landowner’s income taxes and a tax credit in Georgia. To find out more about conservation easements and a possible tax deduction, check the Georgia Land Trust website at http://www.galandtrust.org

 

Land Trust Links

Useful On-Line Tools for Land Trusts

Staff members of the Georgia and Alabama Land Trusts presented a session on Annual Monitoring at the Land Trust Alliance’s Southeast Conference. Our presentation referenced a goodly number of web sites and it was requested that we post some to the web. We have compared notes and compiled the list below. We would welcome any additional sites or comments on the list below.

GIS/Mapping

Georgia Data Clearinghouse – https://data.georgiaspatial.org/index.asp

NRCS Web Soil Survey – http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm
Allows easy soil mapping, ag/timber capability mapping

NRCS Geospatial Data Gateway – http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/

Alabama Data Portal – http://portal.gsa.state.al.us/

Alabama State Water Program – http://www.aces.edu/waterquality/gis_data/

GIS Pilot -  http://www.gispilot.com/

USFWS GIS Data – http://www.fws.gov/data/statdata/index.html

National Atlas – http://www.nationalatlas.gov/pros.html

GIS Data Links – http://www.doylesdartden.com/gis/misc_gis.html

Georgia Maps – http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/gamaps.htm

More Georgia Maps – http://geology.com/state-map/georgia.shtml

Google maps – http://maps.google.com/

Bing Maps – http://www.bing.com/maps/
(good aerial photos; amazing bird’s eye view in urbanized areas)

NARSAL Watershed Maps – http://narsal.uga.edu/glut/maps_watersheds.html

Metro Atlanta Road Map – http://www.aaccessmaps.com/show/map/atlanta_metro_se.html

Research

Georgia Info       http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/

New Georgia Encyclopedia  – http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Home.jsp

BNET (searchable articles on a lot of topics) – http://www.bnet.com/

GCWCS – http://www1.gadnr.org/cwcs/

USDA Plants Database – http://plants.usda.gov/

Fire Effects Information System – http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/index.html

Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants – http://www.florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/

NatureServe – http://www.natureserve.org/

Encyclopedia of Life – http://www.eol.org/

GA Rare Element Occurrences – http://www.georgiawildlife.com/content/displaycontent.asp?txtDocument=89&txtPage=9

Encyclopedia of Earth – http://www.eoearth.org/

Sherpa Guides – http://www.sherpaguides.com/

Georgia Tax Assessors – http://gaassessors.com/

Coastal Georgia Ecosystems – http://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/public/app/all_species_lists.asp

Georgia Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategy – http://www1.gadnr.org/cwcs/

Georgia DNR – http://www.gadnr.org/naturalresources.aspx

World Wildlife Fund (ecoregion descriptions)- http://www.worldwildlife.org/wildworld/profiles/terrestrial_na.html

The Nature Conservancy – http://www.tnc.org

Weather (For planning when to go into the woods or stay in the barn)

Wundermap – http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap
(interactive weather map with Google Map foundation. Has animation and storm track features.)

Unisys – http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_ir_enh_us_loop-12.html
(Animated satellite map that is real handy for guesstimating weather based on a three or twelve hour scroll.)

Land Trust/Land Management Info

Land Trust Alliance – http://www.lta.org

Private Landowners Network – http://www.privatelandownernetwork.org/plnlo/doc280162.asp
(mother lode of resources)

Georgia/Alabama Land Trust – http://www.galandtrust.org
(A lot of links posted on the site; some reasonably well thought articles on land protection.)

Appraisal Institute – http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/

American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers – http://www.asfmra.org/education/schedule/

Forest Guild – http://www.forestguild.org
(Has posts of its magazine Forest Wisdom)

 

Using Dirt to Clean Up the Air

Mitigating Climate Change through Food and Land Use
Report Offers a Ray of Hope

It sometimes seems there is no good news regarding atmospheric carbon dioxide. A significant majority of scientists  agrees  that we have pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (passing the critical 350 parts per million threshold in 1988 and continuing beyond that since) that even under cautious estimates there are significant environmental impacts already underway (most notably the rapid disappearance of polar ice cover and glaciers throughout the world) and varying degrees of environmental, economic and social catastrophe heading our way in the not too distant future.

Most solutions proposed to palliate, slow or reverse this trend are capital intensive, require national mobilization and are exceedingly complicated. (Quick, someone explain how “cap and trade” works.) For many of them it seems true that “for every solution there is a problem.” While fixing one thing, they break another.

A ray of hope has appeared for a more workable solution in the form of a recent Worldwatch Institute  report , Mitigating Climate Change through Food and Land Use. The report proposes five low-tech and relatively affordable strategies that authors say could use improved agricultural practices to potentially offset up to 25% of global emissions from fossil fuels each year.  Importantly, the practices are highly local in their nature and wouldn’t require treaties, international negotiations or enormous capitalization.

The five proposed strategies (described more fully in the site linked above) are:

• Enriching soil carbon.

• Farming with perennials.

• Climate-friendly livestock production.

• Protecting natural habitat.

• Restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands.

The theme of global warming and land management practices to combat it also surfaces in the Summer issue of the Land Trust Alliance’s Saving Land magazine. The magazine features an article in its Conservation News section entitled “Sobering Research.”  The sobering news references studies by the Audubon Society indicating a majority of bird species wintering in North America have moved their range northward over the past forty years, with around a quarter of the species studied having moved over 100 miles north.

Another study referenced, by the USGS Forest Service, indicates that death rates in old growth forests in the west have doubled “over the past two to three decades” due to higher temperatures and water shortages. (The die off of old growth forests is both a symptom and a cause of global warming, as the old trees sequester tremendous amounts of carbon that is released as they decompose.)

The article’s hopeful conclusion centers on a new program that encourages ranchers to maintain their grasslands in ways that enhance the storage of carbon, noting that rangelands in the American West naturally absorb about 190 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. Financial incentives through the Rangelands Soil Carbon Management Offsets Program are helping get the project rolling, with Montana’s Sun Ranch receiving $30,000 after its carbon sequestration efforts become the first to qualify for the program.

It seems that the retention, recovery and effective stewardship of productive and ecologically significant lands being one critical and achievable step to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide could be a boon to the land trust community. After all, our core mission is to try to make sure that all of these things are undertaken to the greatest extent and that where possible, the protection of these lands and more beneficial land use practices will be made permanent. It should give us all a greater sense of the importance of our mission to think that we might literally have a hand in saving the world.

 

Call Your Congressman…

In case you hadn’t heard, there are bills in both houses of Congress that will go a long way towards aiding your local land trust (Alabama Land Trust and Georgia Land Trust included). The conservation easement tax incentive, an increased deduction for the charitable gift of a conservation easement, has helped land trusts nationwide put an extra half a million acres under easement in just two years. Unfortunately, the incentive is set to  die at the end of this year. Bills H.R. 1831 and S. 812, if passed, would make the current conservation easement tax incentive a permanent part of the tax code.

We’re asking all of our friends and supporters to contact their local representative to make sure these bills are supported. As it currently stands, the bills have 102 cosponsors in the House, less than half of the 218 required to pass the bill. The LTA has indicated the bill is in greater need of the support of the House, the Senate having been more amenable to the conservation easement tax incentive in the past. The most effective method of swaying your local representative is to call them at their Capitol Hill office. The Capitol Hill switchboard which will direct you to your representative’s office can be reached at: 202-224-3121

A fact sheet to help you talk to your representative about it can be found here.

Links to the bills can be found here: H.R. 1831; S. 812

For our own purposes I’ve rundown the info on who has or has not sponsored the bills in Alabama & Georgia:

In Georgia, Senator Isakson and Chambliss have both sponsored the bill.
In Alabama, neither Senator Shelby or Sessions have sponsored the bill.

The following map indicates the Alabama and Georgia districts and whether or not each representative has cosponsored the bill. Green means they have cosponsored, yellow means they had cosponsored a similar bill in the last Congress (110th) but have failed to do so in this one (111th):

 

The Alabama and Georgia Underground…

I wanted to take some time and point to an excellent article and  an undervalue resource in our area. National Geographic has an article out on the caves of TAG (Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia) deserving a look. Though many people are aware of many caves in Alabama and Georgia, I think few people realize that North Alabama and Georgia is  one of the world’s cave hotspots. The TAG region is the home of 14,665 caves (and counting, new ones are discovered every year), a veritable honeycomb of limestone. Take the time to watch the video of the National Geographic caving experience and check out their photo gallery, which has a number of incredible images.

If you’re searching for a reason why people aren’t better acquainted with their local cave (indeed, with nearly 15,000 of them it sounds like everyone would have a pet cave in their own back yard) is because, frankly, many of them are unexciting. Many caves are crack caves, not formed from the erosion of limestone but from collapses in the rock (usually of the sandstone) which don’t really form any of the exciting geological formations we’ve come to expect from caves. They are as they are described – a long narrow crack. Many other caves can only offer a tight-claustrophobic experience, never opening into any grand rooms or chambers (In one such experience I crawled 30 feet only to find a dead end and a peevish king snake). Most caves are on private land, are hard to find and generally not advertised by their owners – for obvious reasons. I was just notified yesterday that I’d been passing by a large “show cave” on one of my regular hikes, the entrance not 50 feet from the trail. They’re easy to miss. Others are basically inaccessible to inexperienced cavers. Of the over 4,000 caves in Alabama I know of only a few open for all experiences levels to all the public: Sequoyah Caverns, Rickwood Caverns, DeSoto Caverns and Cathedral Caverns.

Though generally undervalued…everyone should put a cave on their weekend “to do” list. What’s often not thought about them is how they add to the biological diversity of the region. While we, and most other wildlife live, breathe, eat and sleep above ground, dozens of others of species live below, many completely unlike any other species of life in existence. Cave crickets, bats, blind crayfish and fish abound. In fact the Alabama Cavefish, with only 9 specimens ever identified, is thought to be the rarest vertebrate on the planet. Beyond adding to the ecological diversity caves obviously can provide some breathtaking images.

I toured Cathedral Caverns two weeks ago, one of Alabama’s better known and publicly accessible caves. Unfortunately I left my tripod at home and was left with few high quality images, but here are some of the better ones:

Cave entrance from the tunnel. Cathedral Caverns boasts one of the largest cave entrances in the country.

A massive pillar of limestone, more than 30 feet wide.

Though the Alabama Land Trust and Georgia Land Trust do not specifically target caves for protection, we do work considerable in the area of TAG. For example, in Jackson County, boasting the highest density of caves of anywhere in the country, the land trust has currently 5,400 acres of land. The two land trusts protect tens of thousands of acres on the Cumberland Plateau, home to most of the regions caves.

If you have a further interest in the caves of Alabama and Georgia, check out the National Speleological Society (headquarted in Huntsville, AL), the Southeastern Cave Conservancy, or Cave Trip Reports, all excellent cave resources for the Southeast.