Land Trust for Tennessee is incredibly effective at using this flexible legal tool for a variety of good purposes. The organization has protected not only thousands of acres of individual tracts of land, but has also been able, by working in partnership with government agencies, to add new tracts to existing protected lands, expanding critical wildlife ecosystems in the state.
When 68 acres of grassland along the Hiwassee River were designated as the site of a wastewater treatment plant for a planned high-density residential development, for example, the Land Trust for Tennessee responded by working with the Wildlife Resources Agency. from Tennessee to raise funds to buy the land. It is a small stretch by state standards, but lies along a migration route used by threatened sandhill cranes during migration to their wintering grounds at the nearby Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge. Today that land is part of the wildlife refuge, protected by generations of sandhill cranes. And the people of Tennessee.
In another example of such partnerships, the Land Trust for Tennessee worked with the University of the South at Sewanee to purchase 3,000 acres of logging company land in and around Lost Cove on the Cumberland Plateau. This purchase protects not only the biodiversity-rich cove, but also expands the land that is already protected by the adjacent Franklin State Forest and the adjacent Natural Bridge State Natural Area. Combined with conservation easements in three neighboring private areas, these protected spaces create a large wildlife corridor and protect several rare plant species, some of which exist nowhere else in the world.
People outside the South widely believe that our science-denying elected officials represent Southerners’ views on the environment, but that is not true. Most people here understand that the weather is warming, no matter what their “leaders” profess to believe, and that extreme weather will keep coming. Liberals or conservatives, they expect their governments to protect their drinking water. Old or young, if a factory belches pollutants that make them sick, they want someone to stop them. Black, brown or white, rich or struggling, they worry about seeing a sign on a river bank that warns that fish are contaminated and unsafe to eat.
In the South, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Land Trust for Tennessee are just three of many regional organizations that are working, through a variety of strategies, to ensure a future for all that is safe from environmental hazards. More importantly, they are working to ensure a future for the planet that is safe for all of its inhabitants, humans and non-humans alike.
This essay is part of Times Opinion 2021 Christmas Donation Guide. If you are interested in any of the organizations mentioned in the Times Opinion Giving Guide 2021, go directly to their website. Neither the authors nor The Times will be able to answer questions about the groups or facilitate donations.
Margaret Renkl, a contributing writer for Opinion, is the author of the books “Graceland, At Last: Notes on the Hope and Pain of the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”
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