SC's ACE Basin a refuge amid urban sprawl

via WJCL and the AP

Amid sprawling development from Charleston and Hilton Head Island, a group of landowners, companies, nonprofits and government agencies set out 25 years ago to conserve a quiet corner of South Carolina.

Their success story is the ACE Basin — an area the Nature Conservancy has called one of the world’s last great places — and which gets its name from its three main rivers.

The basin drained by the Ashepoo, Combahee and South Edisto (ACE) rivers comprises 1 million acres of landscape including timberland, swamp and farmland as well as barrier islands and beaches.
Because of the effort, which includes working with property owners to limit development through conservation easements, the basin looks much as it did 250 years ago. The area has large waterfront plantation homes, some dating to the days of the colonial rice culture, many of which are now used as hunting lodges.

There are also small farms, cabins and mobile homes scattered along the dirt roads winding through the basin intersected by The Ace Basin Parkway, U.S. 17, a gently curving four-lane blacktop where one can drive for miles seeing only forest, small homes and marsh vistas.

More than 150 property owners have now placed conservation easements on their land in which they agree to forever limit development. In return for doing so they generally receive tax credits. The first easement in the basin was placed by media mogul Ted Turner on his former Hope Plantation property back in the 1980s, Lane said.

For more information, go to http://www.acebasin.net