| Unique prairies evade
developers: Temple-Inland, Nature Conservancy join to protect
Georgia land
(Note: This is a language deception extra-twist, having the controllers sound like Robin Hood, 'snatching' land from the bad, bad developers. What a shell game the Delphi Technique and Aesopian language are playing with people's psyches!) February 11, 2003 By Stacy Shelton The Atlanta Journal-Constitution http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/ To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@ajc.com Rome, Georgia - There's a land grab under way in North Georgia by environmentalists and conservationists trying to beat developers to the state's best mountain land. The latest tract snatched away from the bulldozers was announced Monday in Rome. Temple-Inland Forest Products Corp., a Texas-based timber company, teamed with the Nature Conservancy to protect 929 acres in Floyd County next to the Alabama state line. There, pine forests surround more than two dozen miniature prairies more suited to the Great Plains. Experts say the unique Georgia landscape -- called the Coosa Valley Prairie -- is home to more than 41 rare and endangered animals and plants, including the whorled sunflower, once thought to have disappeared 100 years ago. Bachman's sparrows, fox squirrels and bobcats have also been spotted. "I've heard those prairies called the rarest land in Georgia," said Brent Martin, executive director of Georgia Forestwatch in Ellijay. With federal money to buy conservation land drying up, Martin said, timber companies like Temple-Inland "hold the key in a lot of ways to the future of these forests ... Getting these guys to commit to keeping these forests as forests forever is huge." Temple-Inland, which will receive tax breaks in return for giving up development rights on its Floyd County property, signed an agreement last summer with the conservancy to identify, protect and manage sites on 2.1 million acres of forestland in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. About 350,000 acres is in Georgia. The company believes sustainable forest principles will help grow better forests. On the Coosa Valley Prairie site, Temple-Inland retains ownership but agreed to manage the forest with the conservancy. Future owners would be bound to the conservation easement. Clear-cutting is prohibited, but the company will be allowed selective logging. Prescribed burns, or controlled forest fires, will be set to clear the forest floor of fallen limbs and rotting debris, triggering lush growth. Public access won't be allowed except by permission. Since last summer, two other conservation efforts netted another 2,315 acres in North Georgia where development is more intense. In June, the last piece was acquired for the Burnt Mountain Preserve near the town of Jasper, in the Appalachian foothills. In November, the state added the Cloudland Connector to its holdings, linking the state park to a 4,500-acre preserve called the Lula Lake Land Trust. Bobby Davenport, whose family donated 1,200 acres of the Lula Lake property -- and who now helps broker other conservation deals for the Trust for Public Land -- said the northwest corner of the state didn't have much subdivision interest until the mid-1990s when Georgia began offering HOPE scholarships. Before, the march of houses out of Chattanooga stayed in Tennessee, where there was no state income tax. HOPE "finally broke the dam," Davenport said. Between the state park and the land trust, about 8,000 acres of mostly undisturbed Georgia mountain land blocks the Atlanta-to-Chattanooga sprawl train. "It would have been wicked to subdivide it and sell it, period," Davenport said. The Trust for Public Land also negotiated deals for the Burnt Mountain Preserve, where mountain communities took off on a growth spurt in the 1990s. "Pickens [County] has a triple whammy if you will, from retirees and second homes and regular suburban subdivisions and all the commercial development that goes with that," said Mountain Conservation Trust executive director Barbara Decker. |