Article Courtesy of the Trust for Public Land
Photography by Ed Funk
& Donna Huffman

emember back when you thought you could change the world? When was the last time you really tried? Well, the Trust for Public Land is doing it every day.

The Trust for Public Land, or TPL, is a national private non-profit land conservation organization that facilitates the transfer of privately owned land into public ownership. TPL helps federal, state and local governments and communities set aside land for people to enjoy as parks, gardens, trails, and other natural places, “ensuring livable communities for generations to come.” TPL also helps preserve important historic places.

On the southern stretch of South Carolina’s coast lies beautiful Beaufort County, a cluster of over 60 islands separated by innumerable rivers, creeks and marshes. Home to the second oldest town in the state, the county boasts a rich history and a great many historical and cultural assets, from Native American sites to former sea island cotton and rice plantations.

The area has attracted visitors and new residents from all over the world for many years. Beaufort is currently one of the fastest growing counties in the Lowcountry. With this growth, however, has come concern over traffic congestion, water quality and other issues tied to rapid development.

In 2000, Beaufort County voters decided to safeguard their stunning scenery and quality of life by supporting bond expenditures of $40 million for the Rural and Critical Lands Program, the first local greenspace-buying measure in South Carolina. The program uses tax money to purchase and protect from development, threatened or rural parcels of land throughout the county.

In 2003 TPL was invited to help Beaufort County administer this ground breaking program. A major first step in giving the program direction for the future was to create a greenprint of the area. Greenprinting brings together the community to identify a long-term conservation vision, giving focus to where conservation dollars should be spent. TPL conducted a series of seven public meetings all over the county in February 2004, putting pens in participants’ hands and asking them to mark on maps the areas needing protection. The result of the greenprinting process in Beaufort County is a living, breathing document that mirrors the community’s conservation desires and gives direction to the county’s land-buying program.

Since partnering with Beaufort County, TPL has acted quickly to protect several properties, totaling over 500 acres, identified as conservation priorities on the Greenprint. Here are just a few local properties that PTL has helped Beaufort County acquire as of December 2004:

* 2 properties, totaling 125 acres, around the headwaters of the Okatie River.

* A 38-acre parcel known as the Colony Property that was the anticipated home of 29,000 square feet of commercial and office space on Highway 278.

* Development rights on the 186-acre Calhoun Plantation fronting the Colleton River in the agricultural community of Pinckney Colony.

* 3.5 acres of Hilton Head Island fronting 700 feet of deep water along Jarvis Creek a prolific shrimping and crabbing area.

In the early 1990’s, TPL purchased and transferred 4,203 acres of bottomland hardwoods to Congaree Swamp National Monument. And since that time, TPL helped add 2,335 acres of land within the Chattooga National Wild and Scenic River watershed to the Sumter National Forest. And in 1996, TPL played a key role in the purchase of 7,600 acres in the Winyah Bay area— land that became the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge.

Currently the Trust for Public Land continues to work with Beaufort County to help plan and implement their $40 million Rural and Critical Lands Program, an effort to preserve the county’s natural and historic resources. Collaborating with the Beaufort County community creating greenprint—a greenspace “master plan”—TPL is helping the county implement a visionary greenspace program in South Carolina—a program that will serve as a model for other land conservation programs in the state.

“South Carolina is blessed with a richly diverse landscape,” says Slade Gleaton, Charleston-based state director for TPL. “As more people flock to our state to live and enjoy this diverse natural beauty, we are beginning to see the often startling effects of growth. And we suddenly realize the importance of having a collective and clear vision of what we want our community to look like 10 or 20 years into the future—a vision that thoughtfully accommodates commercial and residential development and the protection of those vital natural and historic lands that make our communities the special places that they are. And that’s what Beaufort County’s greenprint is all about.”

With offices in Charleston and Beaufort County, the Trust for Public Land has been active in the Carolinas for over two decades. In South Carolina alone, TPL has protected more than 12,500 acres of at-risk land. Most of those acres were saved along the state’s rapidly growing coastline. TPL’s conservation efforts cover a range of landscapes, from a 1.25 tract in downtown Charleston to thousands of acres on Winyah Bay.

If you’ve ever visited historic Mount Vernon on the Potomac or the Golden Gate Bridge Recreational Area; floated through the Florida Everglades or visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic District; rafted down the Chattahoochee River in Georgia, or read about Thoreau’s Walden Woods, then you have witnessed first-hand what TPL does. Since its inception in 1972, TPL has completed more than 2,900 projects in 46 states (and in D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada and the Virgin Islands) and protected more than 2 million acres of land valued at over $4 billion.

Technically speaking, TPL is a land conservation organization rather than an environmental organization. The Sierra Club’s mission, for example, is to protect the wild, unspoiled places of the earth; The Nature Conservancy (TNC) preserves natural habitat for plants, animals and natural communities, and some other groups like the Riverkeepers, concentrate on protecting water resources. The Trust for Public Land often works in concert with these organizations, and although what TPL does clearly has a positive effect on the environment (creating cleaner air, cleaner water, and an overall better quality of life), its main mission is to conserve land for people— that is, saving land for you to enjoy as part of a larger community.

For more information on the Trust for Public Land or the Beaufort County greenprint, visit the Trust for Public Land’s website: www.tpl.org/southcarolina. And see how the Trust for Public Land is helping to change your world—for the better.