Conservation Agreement Protects More Than 127,000 Acres

By Matt Lakin, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.

Nov. 9–Gov. Phil Bredesen stood in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains on Thursday to celebrate what he called the state’s largest conservation of land in more than seven decades.

“This is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said. “It’s not just about recreation. It’s about protecting the quality of the air and water and preserving our natural heritage. I hope 100 years from now people will be going out there to enjoy God’s natural beauty.”

The land along the northern Cumberland Plateau in Anderson, Campbell, Morgan and Scott counties amounts to more than 127,000 acres with a price tag of about $135 million. Bredesen compared the acquisition, made through a public-private partnership, to the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the 1930s.

“It’s public land that will be used for hunting, fishing, hiking and other recreation,” he said.

The land includes about 10,000 acres on the Emory River near Frozen Head State Park and Natural Area, conservation easements on more than 41,000 nearby acres, and timber rights on 75,000 acres of existing public property.

The total adds up to about 200 square miles of public land, Bredesen said — about twice the size of the city of Knoxville.

The property, formerly owned by two timber companies, connects Frozen Head with the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and Tennessee State Parks will manage the land.

“This is the kind of place that once it’s gone, we can never get back,” said Scott Davis, director of the Tennessee chapter of the Nature Conservancy, which has ranked the Cumberland Plateau area as the eighth most important place in the world for its diverse wildlife and natural beauty.

The state contributed $82 million to the conservation effort. Another $13 million came from the Nature Conservancy, which helped negotiate the acquisition, and $40 million from the lumber companies Conservation Forestry and Lyme Timber.

Those companies will be leased some timber rights on the land for at least the next decade, but large-scale clear-cutting won’t be allowed, the governor said.

“We found two timber companies that are interested in promoting sustainable harvesting,” Bredesen said. “This partnership allowed us to get control of the land. Most conservation organizations understand we’re not going to stop building houses in this country. We just would like for the companies to use sensible, sustainable practices.”

The deal will also provide local jobs and tax money for the counties, he said.

Bredesen he hopes to see the land bring the same kind of economic boom for those counties that the Smokies brought for Sevier and Blount counties.

“Ultimately, when you have beautiful land like this, it will bring people to it,” he said. “In the long run, I hope we can acquire all of the rights to all of this land.”

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