Brosnan forest easement: filling the greenbelt gap?

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.

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

Read more in tomorrow's editions of The Post and Courier.