Affiliates, partners help land trusts In land protection
In addition to our general land protection activities in Alabama and Georgia, Alabama Land Trust, Inc., and Georgia Land Trust, Inc. operate in a number of program areas and with affiliates and partners in our on-going mission of land protection.
Affiliates include Chattahoochee Valley Land Trust in southwest Georgia, Lula Lake Land Trust in the Lookout Mountain area in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, and Saving Places for Atlanta’s Community Environment (SPACE) in Atlanta.
Georgia Land Trust, Inc. is working with Fort Stewart and Fort Benning and other conservation partners on the Army Compatible Use Buffer (ACUB) program.
As partners, Georgia Land Trust and Alabama Land Trust are qualified holders of conservation easements (CEs) generated by the program.
In the Army Compatible Use Buffer (ACUB) program, we team with the U.S. Department of Defense and other land protection entities.
At Fort Stewart, Georgia Land Trust has been involved since 2005, becoming a primary partner in August 2008
At Fort Stewart – the largest armor training base east of the Mississippi River – the ACUB program targets the buffering of private land to retain the ability of assigned Army units to continue training along the perimeter and enable enhanced land management efforts to increase the soldier-carrying capacity of the existing ranges and mechanized maneuver areas.
Fort Stewart is located in the heart of the once vast longleaf pine ecosystem. Today, less than 3 million acres of longleaf forest remains, and less than 3 percent of the acreage is considered to be in relatively natural condition. Fort Stewart supports some of the best remaining examples of longleaf forest. The installation is home to six federally listed species and 20 state-listed or federal species of concern.
These considerations – compounded by development pressures associated with surrounding scenic areas and the city of Savannah – significantly affect training. Fort Stewart’s conservation efforts and ACUB partnerships are directed toward sustaining Fort. Stewart’s training mission and the natural resources in the vicinity of Fort Stewart by conserving land off the installation.
The primary objective of ACUB is to protect all potential and existing habitats that are capable of supporting the rare species known to exist on Fort Stewart including the flatwoods salamander, striped newt, gopher frog, Bachman’s sparrow, swallow-tailed kite, red-cockaded woodpecker, gopher tortoise, indigo snake, Florida pine snake, purple honeycomb head, and pondspice. Protection of these lands will facilitate the protection of the above species populations, thus avoiding training restrictions that may otherwise develop.
The areas targeted for preservation typically buffer and protect the installation’s airfield(s) and off-post air travel corridors, the Convoy Live Fire Range, aerial gunnery ranges, tank, Bradley, artillery, and small arms ranges, as well as other training and maneuver areas.
At Fort Benning, Ga., we work with The Nature Conservancy to prevent incompatible land use and to establish corridors of forest land extending away from Fort Benning that are suitable instead for expansion of the red-cockaded woodpecker population off-post. This also establishes a network of ecologically significant lands.
Our work with the ACUB includes:
• Outreach to and recruitment of landowners whose lands are important to the program’s mission to minimize development density along installation boundaries through donation or purchases of development rights (PDRs);
• Landowner negotiations ensuring that the program’s mission is met while enabling landowners to continue to use their land productively, enjoyably and in economically viable ways;
• Due diligence work associated with successful, defensible conservation easements, such as ordering surveys, appraisals, and title research, conducting baseline documentation of the properties and coordinating closings and recording documentation.
ACUB obtains development rights through donation or purchase of conservation easements on properties near defense installations, minimizing housing development on installation perimeters. This creates a sound and density-minimizing cordon to protect training and deployment capabilities.
The land trusts may also obtain fee simple ownership via donations or purchases from willing landowners on behalf of the ACUB program.
The program also assists land management and restoration and improvement of habitat near military installations. As with all CEs or PDRs, landowners reserve rights to use their lands in ways they specify as part of the deed extinguishing certain rights. Timber operations, agriculture, hunting, and limited homesite developments are acceptable uses for lands near military installations.
If you own land near Fort Stewart or Fort Benning and would like to help preserve military readiness, protect valuable conservation values while continuing low-density use of your land, please contact:
Fort Benning
Matt Wells
Chattahoochee Valley Land Trust
Georgia Land Trust, Program director
Columbus, Ga. office: 706-718-3324
mwells@galandtrust.org
Fort Stewart
Justin Park
Georiga Land Trust
Savannah Office: 706-662-2211
jpark@galandtrust.org
At a glance:
Fort Stewart/Hunter Army Airfield
ACUB PROGRAM
• Located in the heart of longleaf pine’s historic range
• Important habitats: longleaf pine/wiregrass, bottomland hardwood forests, isolated depressional wetlands, Canoochee and Ogeechee river corridors
• Home to federally and state protected plant and animal species: red-cockaded woodpecker, eastern indigo snake, flatwoods salamander, gopher tortoises
• The objective of ACUB is to protect existing and potential habitats that are capable of supporting the rare species known to exist on Fort Stewart
• Protection of these lands facilitates protection of rare species, thus avoiding training restrictions that may otherwise develop
• Protection efforts focused on four Priority Zones; 120,000 acres.
