12,000 acres of nature preserved

Norfolk Southern donates Brosnan Forest land

Alan Hawes
The Post and Courier

A stand of longleaf pine at Brosnan Forest in Dorchester County where a conservation easement was placed.

The rumor taunted the upper Dorchester County countryside for years: Brosnan Forest is about to be sold to developers.

As more houses were built in the county, and more of its miles of timberland were sold by MeadWestvaco, more people pointed to Norfolk Southern's 12,000-acre recreation reserve of longleaf pine and trophy deer and said, that's next.

Conservationists would unroll maps of an emerging cocoon of more than 750,000 acres of protected greenbelt in the three counties around Charleston and point to the gap in upper Dorchester. There was no sizeable protected tract beyond the National Audubon Society's Beidler Forest.

Brosnan was the next biggest thing out there; as it went, the rural upper county would go. And not far from Brosnan were the black willow bends of the Edisto River, championed as the longest free-flowing blackwater river in the world, running all along the county's border down to the singular ACE Basin.

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The conservation easement at Brosnan Forest was donated by Norfolk Southern. Watch »

That's the real beauty of Norfolk Southern's recent donation of nearly 12,000 Brosnan Forest acres into conservation easement, the reason why a forest meeting hall full of delighted public and nonprofit conservation groups and Gov. Mark Sanford joined company officials to celebrate the donation at an evening soiree earlier this week.

"It's an amazing gift," Sanford said, "a sense of the South Carolina quiet wonder we all grew up with. If we had more corporate citizens who had this kind of land and conservation ethic, we would be remarkably better for it."

The Brosnan acres were given into easement; no concessions were made by the community or the state. Downstream along the Edisto, MeadWestvaco plans to develop 72,000 acres of timberland as the East Edisto project, a mixture of greenbelt land, homes, businesses and industries. The company also owns and is selling large tracts farther up the river.

"I think it sets the standard for what's expected of MeadWestvaco," said Charles Lane, South Carolina Conservation Bank chairman, who led the task force that helped create the ACE Basin, a public-private preserve of 350,000 acres largely in neighboring Colleton County.

In an e-mail comment, MeadWestvaco special projects manager Mac Baughman responded, "Brosnan Forest is a great example of MeadWestvaco's philosophy that conservation easements work best when they are customized to the characteristics of a specific property."

And Jennifer Howard, communications director for the company, added that MeadWestvaco "has put more than 5,000 acres and nearly 19 miles of Edisto River frontage under easement."

Private landholders along the Edisto and its tributaries have stayed at arm's length from donating easements, waiting to see which way the huge corporate tracts would go.

Now phones have begun to ring at Lowcountry Open Land Trust, one of the nonprofits that handle easements.

"Now that they know Brosnan is safe, they feel free to protect their property," said Will Haynie, executive director.

The Brosnan acreage is rarified space — endless pine savannahs, wild turkeys, quail, endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers and flying squirrels. But it will be maintained as a retreat for Norfolk-Southern and its guests.

Its value to the Lowcountry is bigger than the private acres, as big as the deer who leap from it, to help make the entire upper county a trophy hunter destination.

"It's a beachhead for conservation to connect greenbelts with Four Holes Swamp, the whole Ashley and Edisto rivers compound over to the ACE Basin," said Dana Beach, Coastal Conservation League executive director. "This is a dream."