New Easement Creates a Bear Preserve

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust announces the signing of a conservation easement with Stuckey Timberland that will create a 2,194 acre tract  in Twiggs County, Georgia.

Known as Bear Creek Reserve, the property is located in the heart of the black bear habitat in central Georgia and is home to the highest concentration of black bears per acre in Georgia.

The University of Georgia’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources conduct ongoing studies of the bear population at Bear Creek.

Russell Franklin,III, Mike Harrell, Wade Hall, Lynda Stuckey Franklin, Kat Nelson, with the Land Trust, and Jay W. Gould-Stuckey

While retaining timber management rights on the upland portions of the tract, Stuckey Timberland’s grant of a conservation easement perpetually preserves the expansive hardwood bottom lands and the standing hardwood trees which are critical to the bear population. Additionally, the easement protects the upland areas from future development.

Based in Eastman, Georgia, Stuckey Timberland is owned by the W. S. Stuckey family. Second generation family members W. S. (Bill) Stuckey, Jr. and Lynda Stuckey Franklin and Stuckey Timberland President and CEO Wade Hall presented the easement to the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust today during a ceremony on the property. Kat Nelson, Director of Land Protection for the Land Trust, accepted the easement on behalf of the Land Trust.

“We are excited to be able to protect this very special property from development and to preserve the habitat of the black bear population,” said Lynda Stuckey Franklin. “This is a great testimony to the stewardship which our family wishes to exercise in forestland management; a legacy which was passed to us by my father. We hope to pass that legacy on to the next generations of our family.”

Katherine Eddins, Executive Director of the Land Trust said, “This is our first conservation easement protecting significant bear habitat. Thank you to Stuckey Timberland for protecting this unique and precious resource.”

Stuckey Timberland and the Stuckey family have a legacy of excellent stewardship of the land, insisting on the use of forest industry best management practices and sound silvicultural science in the management of the forest lands owned by the family.   Further, they have supported the conservation of critical wildlife habitat and environmentally sensitive properties. As a member of Congress representing coastal and central Georgia counties from 1967 through 1977, Bill Stuckey sponsored the legislation which created the Cumberland Island National Seashore and the Okefenokee Swamp Wilderness Area.

 

Bring on Your Wild Child!

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust is pleased to announce the launch of its new Conservation Education Institute. This new initiative will serve land owners and the general public, including adults, children, families, students, teachers, and educators. The Land Trust believes that building an appreciation for the natural environment is critical to its mission of protecting land and creating a healthier landscape.

“Expanding public outreach activities will provide quality educational experiences while benefitting our land protection mission. Our new Conservation Education Institute will focus on Alabama, Georgia, and other easement locations,” says Katherine Eddins, Executive Director.

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust recently employed Renee Simmons Raney to serve as Director of Conservation. She will develop and implement  programs which will include Conservationist-in-Training courses for families and youth, a new “Wild Child” series to conquer nature deficit disorder, outdoor classroom events, educational outreach, partnership field programs, teacher workshops, environmental arts, natural heritage storytelling series, and the successful Choccolocco Creek Watershed Alliance project, which was founded in 2010 and is funded by Eastman.

“We believe that an appreciation of our natural resources and heritage is critical to our mission of protecting land and creating a healthier landscape. By providing educational opportunities to people of all ages, we increase the number of folks who understand the value of natural resources and are therefore more likely to take steps to protect these fragile resources,” says Renee Simmons Raney, Director of Conservation.

Raney served as the Assistant Director for Jacksonville State University Field Schools for the past twelve years. Prior to that she was the Education Director for ten years at the Anniston Museum of Natural History.

Allies to this new endeavor include organizations such as Legacy: Partners in EE, Environmental Education Association of Alabama, Longleaf Botanical Gardens, Alabama and Georgia Parks and Recreation, Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Alabama State Parks, Georgia’s McIntosh Preserve, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Friends of the Talladega National Forest, private land resources, and many others.

“Growing up on a southern dairy farm, I often went fishing, swimming, and paddling with my parents. We were frequently accompanied by swarms of jewel-toned dragonflies. Once an emerald dragonfly landed on the tip of my fishing pole. Momma told me to make a wish, but before I even had time to make one, I caught a fish. At that moment, catching a fish was my wish! However, as time passed, my “wish” evolved into a hopeful passion for preserving natural places so that future generations of children will have enchanted moments in the natural world.

 

Feature Friday: George Jeter

Every Friday we will  feature and flashback to one of our easement landowners. These stories are updates on profiles written by Frank McIntosh.

George Jeter with grandchildren Stewart and Brantley

Land owning in the Jeter family goes back just a little ways. The family first arrived at Port Royal, VA before 1700. The generations in between have been landowners, as Jeter says, “leapfrogging from one frontier to the next.” When Columbus, GA was founded in the 1830s, the Jeters had already arrived in the area.

Jeter grew up an avid hunter and says the appeal of the land goes back to the days when he’d grab his single shot .410 or .22 and take his bike up the road and go hunting. Although he no longer hunts, saying he “takes no great pleasure in killing,” he still loves the woods and the animals. His greatest pleasure in owning the land he says is having “free range” to roam and notes that it is ever more difficult to have that access to land without owning some.

Jeter, who worked as CFO for AFLAC, says, “I’ve been retired since 1985, but I still pretty much work full-time” as a consultant to the company and various charitable organizations. Jeter notes Columbus has “per capita probably the highest percentage of charities anywhere.

” I’ve always thought that people who’ve been fortunate should share.” One volunteer project Jeter helped bring to fruition was a 50-year lease of Department of Defense land on West Point Lake for use as a Boy Scout camp. “I had to get the Secretary of Army to sign it. He was the only person who could sign a lease that long.”

Jeter’s son Jim, an engineer at Warner Robins AFB, lives in Bonaire and with the help of some neighbors looks after the property, which has been a bit more of a chore during a recent cold, wet winter. Significant portions of the property stayed underwater for a while, in part because every let up in the rain seemingly triggers another release from the Lake Jackson reservoir upstream on the Ocmulgee.

Cabin on the easement covered in a rare snowfall.

A goodly portion of the easement property was logged prior to Jeter’s purchase, and he intends to try to restore Longleaf pine to some of the upland areas. The balance of the property is used for hunting and to provide habitat. Among the animals that find habitat on the property are a pair of nesting eagles (“I worry about my Shih Tzu when we’re up there,”) a den of coyotes (“you should hear ‘em when the train comes through,”) black bears, bobcats and “ducks by the thousands.” Jim noted with the property’s periodic flooding you could almost hunt deer and duck from the same spot at different points in the year.

There is also a beaver pond near the lodge on the property. The pond stays wet even in the driest weather as the area’s topography area feeds water down off surrounding hills toward the pond. There is also a strong artesian well. A well bored to serve the lodge produces around 2,000 gallons an hour, flowing so freely that it needed to be capped.

Asked what is his least favorite aspect of owning land is, Jeter replies, “You don’t own land; it owns you.” Of course, his family’s known that for a few hundred years.

 

 

Feature Friday: Dr. Donnie Smith

Every Friday we will  feature one of our easement landowners. These stories are updates on profiles written by Frank McIntosh.

Dr. Donnie Smith grew up on a farm in Coffee County, AL that his father worked until age 85. He says, “farming was kind of like a marriage to my father. He didn’t last too long after he finally had to stop working the farm; people die pretty quickly when they lose a spouse.”

A sister now lives in the home place that they grew up in and the original 400 acres is back in the family after being sold. “I worked real hard on that, and I’ve made sure it can never leave the family again,” Smith says.

Dr. Donnie Smith, his son and grandson

Smith has protected some 1,000 acres in Fayette and Tuscaloosa counties in Alabama with a conservation easement held by Georgia-Alabama Land Trust.

Hunting was a luxury growing up in that very rural setting, but Smith has been drawn to hunting his whole life. And hunting drew him to want to own land. After finishing medical school “and I finally had some expendable cash, I started buying properties. As land became available I would purchase it—80 acres here, 80 acres there. It adds up. I now own properties from Montana to Florida. I just enjoy looking for a new place to visit.”

Smith’s 2008 conservation easement is land that is predominantly managed for timber but features intermixed hardwoods and two lakes. Smith reports the land is good for wildlife viewing, noting sightings of quail, wood ducks (15-20 mating pairs, some drawn to duck boxes around the property), foxes, and bobcats. The lakes even draw transient ospreys.

One of the lakes on the Smith easement

Beyond the connection with the land  and  hunting, Smith says, “land is still a good investment. It’s not too liquid, but right about now I wished I’d put my 401k in it.”

The preservation of natural environments is important to Smith, too, noting that “we want to see some things kept in a natural state. What would be happening to a place like Yellowstone had it not been protected? I would hate see what might have happened.”

And then there is another benefit of land ownership. “It is a relief valve,” Smith says. “Some people go see a psychiatrist; I go up and work the land. I enjoy managing the land for turkey. I enjoy maintaining the road and fire lanes—just running the equipment.”

 

 

Georgia-Alabama Land Trust Receives Grant from The Coca-Cola Company Foundation

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust received a $123,950 grant from the Coca-Cola Company Foundation to support watershed protection in Georgia’s Chattahoochee River Basin and Alabama’s Cahaba, Black Warrior and Tom Bigbee River Basins.

“The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust is working to save water through land preservation throughout the South,” said Katherine Eddins, executive director of the Land Trust. “Funding from the grant will help us and our affiliate in Columbus, Georgia, the Chattahoochee Valley Land Trust, protect land from development in watersheds serving Columbus and Birmingham & Montgomery, Alabama.”

Protected lands under a conservation easement recharge groundwater and streams that provide water for nature and communities.  A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement between a land owner and a land trust that permanently limits the development of the land. Easements protect significant wildlife habitat by preserving open space, including natural areas, farm and forest land.

Development on these now protected lands would have caused increased runoff and the loss of drinkable water. By preserving these 4,338 acres of open space, the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust is ensuring that over 3 billion liters of water will be available for lakes, streams and faucets.

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust, accredited by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, was founded in 1994 by conservation-minded individuals in response to rapid development and encroachment of natural areas, farms and woodlands. We are now the largest private lands conservation organization in the Southeast, protecting over 268,000 acres of land with 775 voluntary conservation easements.

 

Georgia-Alabama Land Trust Receives Grant from The Coca-Cola Company Foundation

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust received a $123,950 grant from the Coca-Cola Company Foundation to support watershed protection in Georgia’s Chattahoochee River Basin and Alabama’s Cahaba, Black Warrior and Tom Bigbee River Basins.

“The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust is working to save water through land preservation throughout the South,” said Katherine Eddins, executive director of the Land Trust. “Funding from the grant will help us and our affiliate in Columbus, Georgia, the Chattahoochee Valley Land Trust, protect land from development in watersheds serving Columbus and Birmingham & Montgomery, Alabama.”

Protected lands under a conservation easement recharge groundwater and streams that provide water for nature and communities.  A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement between a land owner and a land trust that permanently limits the development of the land. Easements protect significant wildlife habitat by preserving open space, including natural areas, farm and forest land.

Development on these now protected lands would have caused increased runoff and the loss of drinkable water. By preserving these 4,338 acres of open space, the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust is ensuring that over 3 billion liters of water will be available for lakes, streams and faucets.

The Georgia-Alabama Land Trust, accredited by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, was founded in 1994 by conservation-minded individuals in response to rapid development and encroachment of natural areas, farms and woodlands. We are now the largest private lands conservation organization in the Southeast, protecting over 268,000 acres of land with 775 voluntary conservation easements.

 

Feature Friday: Jo Colmore Easement

Every Friday we will  feature one of our easement landowners. These stories are updates on profiles written by Frank McIntosh.

When you own “the prettiest little mountain farm you ever saw,” and your work—raising pure-bred Salers Cattle— is the passion of your life, you start to think about how to protect a place.

Jo Colmore’s Walker County, GA. tract is one of the largest unbroken tracts in an area of increasing fragmentation of property. Located on top of Lookout Mountain, the land is “just full of hemlocks” and, according to Colmore, is the perfect spot for a home site and to raise his “momma cows.”

Jo Colmore with some of his Saler’s Cattle

Colmore has owned the property since 1967, when he and his brother got “a hankering to own some land.” After running a summer camp until 1983, Colmore turned to cattle breeding full-time. The calves he raises are sold to other cattle businesses for breeding purposes.

While his place is usually a portrait of tranquility, the mothers were weaning calves at the time of this interview. Colmore says it gets a little hectic during weaning but that “everyone calms down in a week or so.”

Like many donors, Colmore didn’t just leap into his conservation easement. He took his time, but came to the decision after taking in the miles of darkness untouched by electric lights. He realized it was time to “join this thing” and placed 115 acres of his property, including sensitive areas along Bear Creek, into a conservation easement.

Woodlands on the 115 acre easement

Colmore enjoys sitting on his porch at night looking out at the pristine woodlands of his property and the nearby Cloudland Canyon State Park.

 

Feature Friday: Jack and Linda Fountain

Jack, Linda, Jacqueline, Katherine and Caroline Fountain with Amber

When Dr. Arthur “Jack” Fountain’s grandfather built his cabin on beautiful rolling land near Reynolds, GA. in 1904, his pride of place and sense of the value of craftsmanship led him to insist that all the lumber in the cabin be clean. There is not a knot to be found anywhere in the home, which is still impeccably preserved today. Two generations later, Jack and his wife Linda decided to protect the family home place, and they put the 817-acre property into a conservation easement with the Georgia-Alabama Land Trust.

As with most conservation easements, the Fountains retain ownership of their property. This allows them to continue to use the land as they and their family have in the past. The Fountains and future owners of the land can farm it, manage the timber on it, maintain and to some extent upgrade roads and other improvements to the property.

The conservation easement in Taylor and Macon counties protects the property from future residential and commercial development that would erode its core conservation values and the aspects of the land that the Fountains cherish and wish to see preserved in perpetuity.

The conservation easement ensures that the rich soils that comprise much of their land—more than 300 acres of the property are state or federally recognized productive soils—will remain in use and not join other “house farms” that have been appearing in this area. The easement  also protects the unique hardwood forests and natural areas along the banks of the streams on the property. These Special Natural Areas, running along two tributaries of the Flint River—Horse and Little Vine Creeks—help protect what has been called the most ecologically diverse river east of the Mississippi.

Sherpa Guides says the Flint River and areas adjacent provide habitat for many interesting and unusual plants and animals.” Of particular interest are some of the odd creatures known as troglobites that shelter in the river’s “Blue Holes,” including the blind cave salamander and the Dougherty Plain cave crayfish. Some of these creatures’ ranges are as small as a single cave or spring.

The Fountain home place

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 property contains visual beauty and other more sublime charms. When asked his favorite thing about his land, 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.”

 

Feature Friday: Bob Harbin

Every Friday we will feature a different landowner who took the steps to preserve their property. We begin with Bob Harbin from a story written by Frank McIntosh.

The donor of conservation easements totaling more than 1,500 acres, Dr. Bob Harbin’s first easement, was put in place in 2001 and is in the Big Texas Valley in Floyd County, Georgia.

The easement is part of protected lands near Berry College. Beyond the valley lands, this easement also protects nearly a mile of the ridge top of Lavender Mountain.

The second of Harbin’s Floyd County easements protects nearly a mile of Coosa River bank shortly after it is formed at the confluence of the Etowah and Oostanaula and begins its 420-mile journey to Mobile Bay.

The property has 240 acres in cultivation with a portion dedicated to the Quail Conservation Reserve Program. Management practices on the land include planting warm weather grasses, doing controlled fire burns and disking the earth for the game

Bob Harbin; a field with wildflowers on his easement property

birds.

Bob says, “My hobby is habitat management—for quail, turkey, deer, and all wildlife. Everything you do for quail is good for everything else. We have a wildlife biologist who advises us on how to manage the habitat, a never ending job.”

Another Harbin easement is in Cherokee County, Alabama and has a mile of frontage on the east fork of the Little River on top of Lookout Mountain. “It’s an absolutely beautiful place, with unbelievable slopes to get down to river. It took eons for that river to cut its way down through that mountain,” Harbin noted.

Harbin’s devotion to the land comes in part from his father. “My father had to raise five kids. He was an ophthalmologist, like me, and he also loved land. When he bought the property in mid-60s, a banker friend said, ‘Well, if you’re determined to buy land you should get a Federal Farm Loan.’ He did that and got a long-term 3 percent loan. The farm leases on the property paid the note. Of course, that program doesn’t exist any more, but I still love land and like to own it.”

 

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.