Conservation Easements Protect Wildlife, Biologic Diversity
The gopher tortoise is just one protected species that finds refuge on land protected by conservation easements.
Alabama Land Trust and Georgia Land Trust use the Alabama and Georgia Wildlife Action Plans to identify important conservation values to protect, such as wildlife habitat and state-listed landscapes. The land trusts work with landowners to encourage them to incorporate special provisions in their conservation easements that help promote state wildlife conservation goals. For example, most conservation easements have special restrictions for a property’s most ecologically sensitive areas. These “Special Natural Areas” have restrictions or limits on timber harvest and other activities that could impact sensitive areas, such as mature and maturing wetlands, swamps, fragile and ecologically diverse creeks, steep slopes and bottomland hardwood forest areas.
In protecting major watersheds in Alabama and Georgia, where the rivers are among the most biologically diverse waterways in the world, Alabama Land Trust and Georgia Land Trust’s land protection efforts result in protection of wildlife and endangered and threatened species and the maintaining of important biologic diversity.
A red-cockaded woodpecker demonstration tree at Fort Stewart, Ga. protected site shows how these rare birds live in mature pines
Some examples of threatened and endangered species for which our conservation efforts provide habitat include:
– Sixty-four rare and imperiled plant and animal species, 13 of which are found nowhere else in the world, are found on the Cahaba River, where Alabama Land Trust-managed easements protect more than 6.4 miles of river frontage. The Cahaba River has more fish species at 131 than any other river its size in North America. One of our easements along the Cahaba River in Bibb County, has one of the largest, if not the largest, population of the rare Alabama croton (Croton alabamensis) in the world and also the rare Durand oak tree (quercus durandi). This tree is rare in Alabama and is found on soils rich in lime.
– Seventy fish species and 21 taxa of snails in the Choccolocco Creek watershed of the Coosa River, where Alabama Land Trust (ALT) has permanently protected more than 10 miles of creek frontage. The Coosa River watershed, including Choccolocco watershed, is believed to support the largest number of endangered and threatened species found in any Alabama waterway of comparable size.
– The Watercress Darter benefits from an ALT-managed conservation easement in a highly developed area in Jefferson County. The easement includes buffers on Valley Creek and Five Mile Creek.
– Special concern species of amphibians and reptiles find habitat on ALT-protected land in the floodplain forests and swamps of the black belt region. These include the rainbow snake, alligator snapping turtle, coal skink, river frog, southern dusky salamander, speckled kingsnake and eastern kingsnake.
– With its conservation easements in Jackson County, Ala., ALT has protected significant acreage along the headwater creeks of the biodiverse Paint Rock River and along the main stem of the upper reaches of the Paint Rock. The Paint Rock and its headwaters contain over 40 mussel species and 125 fish species. Several of the mussels are only found in these headwater creeks and upper stem of the Paint Rock River.
– ALT easements also protect significant frontage along the Tallapoosa River and its tributaries in Randolph and Tallapoosa Counties. The Tallapoosa harbors 120 native fish species, four of which occur nowhere else outside the basin. The system also is home to 31 species of mussel including three federally-listed species. Eleven species of crayfish are known to inhabit the Tallapoosa system. The protected properties are located in the Piedmont portion of the Tallapoosa River system that is home to at least five endemic fishes as well as a federally-listed freshwater mussel, an endemic mussel taxon, two endemic crayfish species and an endemic snail.
– In addition, ALT has numerous conservation easements bordering the Talladega National Forest. These easements extend the excellent wildlife habitat provided by our National Forest.
– Georgia Land Trust’s collaboration with the Army Compatible Use Buffer program and the conservation easement projects surrounding Fort Stewart protect 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 ACUB project 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 on lands including longleaf forests. This also establishes a network of ecologically significant lands.
– Also in Georgia, conservation easements on private lands in Thomas County protect the indigo snake and the gopher tortoise. Permanent protection on private land easements in Evans County, Ga. protect the gopher tortoise, and a large easement in Dougherty County, Ga. protects substantial longleaf pine landscapes and quail populations there.
Longleaf pine restoration site at Fort Stewart, Ga.
