IP Agrees to Sell Land to Conservation Groups — $300 Million Deal Means Forests Will Be Protected

By Tom Charlier charlier@commercialappealcom

Some of the South’s most ecologically important forests – including a Tennessee site laced with a rare plant – will be protected under a $300 million land deal announced Tuesday between Memphis-based International Paper and two conservation groups.

IP, a paper-products company that’s one of the world’s largest private landowners, is selling 218,000 acres of timberland in 10 states to The Nature Conservancy and The Conservation Fund.

Officials called it the single largest private land conservation sale in the South’s history.

Although IP has been managing the land through environmentally friendly “sustainable forestry” techniques, the deal will prevent the acreage from being developed in the future, said David Liebetreu, vice president of forest resources for the firm.

“The biggest threat to forests is not anything that’s done by foresters. It’s expansion” of urban development, Liebetreu said.

“(These lands) will now be locked up and protected forever.”

The land, most of which eventually will be sold to government agencies for use by the public, includes a 2,569-acre tract in Lewis County, in Middle Tennessee. The parcel along Dry Branch Creek consists of limestone outcroppings and small clumps of an endangered plant species known as Tennessee yellow-eyed grass.

The plant is found in only 15 locations in a three-state area.

The Nature Conservancy, which is buying the bulk of the IP land in the transaction, had been interested in protecting the Dry Branch acreage. “We’d already identified significant ecological sites in each state,” said Gina Hancock, associate state director for group’s Tennessee chapter.

Even while it was held by IP, the site had been designated as a state natural area. Hancock said The Nature Conservancy will try to help the state obtain the grants needed to buy the property from the conservation group.

Announcement of the deal comes eight months after IP announced that it was exploring the possible sale of acreage across the South, where most of its 6.8 million-acre inventory of timber is located.

Liebetreu said the company decided “we can operate our business of paper and packaging without owning the trees.”

IP has maintained its operations headquarters in Memphis since 1987 and now is moving its global headquarters here.

– Tom Charlier: 529-2572

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“The biggest threat to forests is not anything that’s done by foresters.”

David Liebetreu

IP vice president of forest resources

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