Easement to protect 4,000 acres of plantation

In Arcadia, where no beauty should ever fade

GEORGETOWN — Anyone who has glanced upstream while crossing the Waccamaw River on U.S. Highway 17 has seen Arcadia Plantation. It's that eye-catching, seemingly endless vista of rice fields and forest bluff.

Nearly 4,000 acres of the plantation run along the east bank. In gleams of sun on a recent morning, red-tailed hawks rose from the planted fields that deer had foraged at dawn. White egrets settled into wetland rookeries. Fox squirrels scampered the longleaf groves along the river. Wild turkeys trundled among the hardwoods. Three baby feral hogs grunted and rooted along a path.

It won't change, at least for a lifetime.

Ducks Unlimited just signed on to manage a conservation easement on the acreage, granted by the owners, Lucille V. Pate and her family. It's the largest tract among 18,000 Lowcountry acres that the organization put under environmental protection in 2007 as part of a program to set aside wetlands game bird habitat.

In the scheme of things, among the hundreds of thousands of acres now conserved by one public or private group or another, the 19 tracts that make up the 18,000 acres aren't so singular. The Nature Conservancy put nearly 29,000 acres in South Carolina under protection last year in what turned out to be a banner year for conservation easements because of tax breaks.

Ducks Unlimited is one of those "other guys," a host of hunting-oriented conservation groups or smaller environmental groups that create stepping-stone "islands" that give wildlife and plants corridors to move and brood in between the larger tracts.

"I guess we don't toot our horn as much," said Craig LeSchack, Ducks Unlimited conservation program director for the South Atlantic. "We stay busy."

The groups often work in ways that are noticed only in the results. The Lowcountry chapter of Quail Unlimited raised $5,000 last year to create wildlife grasslands along roads through Francis Marion National Forest in Berkeley County. The group's aim is quail habitat, but "what's good for quail is good for the songbirds, woodpeckers, wild turkeys and even butterflies," chapter chairman Tim Long said. "None of it goes to private lands. None of it goes to private groups."

Arcadia Plantation is made up of tidal rice fields and forest wetlands, longleaf pine flatlands, hardwood uplands, and freshwater impoundments. At one time, seven plantations were spread over its grounds. A dirt path into the back acreage spills through the stream at Liquor Still Swamp and comes up on the old Kings Highway, down which rode newly inaugurated president George Washington on a spring day in 1791.

The striking contrasts between rice fields, wetlands and uplands "is scarcely to be conceived," Washington wrote. To this day. Matt Balding, Pate's son, who manages the plantation, sees something new every time he roams the land. He dealt with Ducks Unlimited because of a long friendship with a member of the group.

"I know he thinks like we think. We all want the same thing: to keep the place like it is," Balding said. "It's still private property, but everybody benefits, just the quality of life, the watershed, the scenic ambience. This is where I grew up, running down the river. I wanted this to be here for my kids and grandkids. Some things are just more valuable than money."

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.

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