This is the last article in the COWASEE Basin Focus Area series. I hope you all have enjoyed reading them half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. Even though I grew up in Columbia and thought I knew something about the history, both natural and human of this wonderful area, it has been exciting to discover how much I didn’t know. I wanted to extend a special thanks to Warner Montgomery, retired publisher and president of the Star Reporter Corporation, for his support of this column.

The best part of my job as Land Protection director with the Congaree Land Trust is getting out to see some really special properties within the COWASEE Basin. Of course, the very best part is talking with landowners, local historians, foresters, hunters, fishermen, naturalists, and other folks who have a passion for conservation, the land ethic, and care deeply about this special place.

I’ve discovered there are a significant number of people out there who have always felt strongly about protecting the special qualities of the COWASEE Basin. It remained for Buddy Baker of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, along with the support and guidance of that agency, to bring together like–minded people and put the COWASEE Basin Focus Area on the radar for everyone else. Buddy has gone on to greener pastures with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife, and his presence has been sorely missed, but he still owns a home within the COWASEE Basin and plans to come back in his old age.

The COWASEE Basin Focus Area includes the Congaree, Wateree, and Santee watershed in Richland, Kershaw, Sumter, and Calhoun counties between Camden, Columbia, and St. Matthews. It goes without saying the real stars of the Focus Area, 68% of which is in private ownership, are the landowners who have been good stewards of the land and nurtured their properties, sometimes for generations.

It is also worth repeating the partners, in addition to private landowners, that make up the COWASEE Basin Task Force: South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Ducks Unlimited, Congaree Land Trust, Friends of Congaree Swamp, The Conservation Fund, Richland County Conservation Commission, Sumter County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

In the four short years of the Task Force’s existence, we’ve made great strides, both in land protection efforts as well as publicizing the wonderful attributes of COWASEE. Currently there are 26 private properties totaling more than 21,000 acres, or about 14% of the 146,000 acres of private lands within the Focus Area, in some type of conservation easement. The bottom line is that about 42% of the COWASEE Basin Focus Area is either in public ownership or private conservation easement, and there are discussions underway “as we speak” with more landowners within the Basin about conservation easements on their lands. We hope to within the next five years boost the easement totals in COWASEE to 50,000 acres, an ambitious goal for sure, but we have the very successful ACE Basin Focus Area as our model and guide.

I’ve really only scratched the surface in this series as far as the natural, historical, and cultural features of the COWASEE Basin. There is much out there remaining to be discovered. We are currently working with South Carolina DNR on a tour guide of the COWASEE Basin that should be available for distribution within the next six months. And thanks to a generous grant from the Richland County Conservation Commission, we will be producing what we hope to be a regular COWASEE Basin newsletter that will be distributed to landowners and other interested parties.

Finally, I wanted to say that the COWASEE Basin Focus Area is more than protecting wildlife habitat and saving historic sites and pretty places. It is about landscape conservation including the working farms, forests, and open spaces that sustain and nourish us, which have deep economic and cultural roots in central South Carolina.

Environmental historian and author William Cronon, who incidentally was the eloquent narrator for much of Ken Burn’s recent PBS series on the national parks, notes that at its heart, land conservation is about reaffirming American ideals and core values. The focus area concept has always placed the private landowner at the forefront in what Cronon describes as Thomas Jefferson’s vision of “landed property as a foundation for both liberty and democracy and which remains among the most dearly held values of the American people.”