Conservationists dedicated the state's newest Wildlife Management Area on Wednesday, as a result of a partnership that will mean additional protection for the Broxton Rocks, a south Georgia sandstone rock outcropping with deep crevasses and waterfalls that provides a home for hundreds of plant and animal species, some of them endangered.
"We're preserving a crown jewel in Georgia's ecological treasures," said Noel Holcomb, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, at a remote boat dock on a slough along the Ocmulgee River about 20 miles north of Douglas.
As he and others spoke during a 45-minute dedication ceremony beneath a canopy of moss-draped trees, an alligator swam lazily across the slough and fish leaped out of the brownish water.
The new 3,597-acre Flat Tub Wildlife Management Area, one of about 95 operated by DNR to provide outdoor recreation for Georgians, was the latest addition to the 33,000-acre Broxton Rocks Conservation Area, which includes the Broxton Rocks Preserve, managed by the Georgia Forestry Commission, the Nature Conservancy and Coffee County.
Frankie Snow, the Broxton Rocks' naturalist, said the area was created by shifts in the earth's tectonic plates and thousands of years of erosion. Rock Creek, a tributary of the Ocmulgee, flows through the rocks.
"It is a refuge for plants that don't normally grow in south Georgia," he said. "There are plants from north Georgia and lichens from the far North. There are plants from the tropics."
One of the plants, a Caribbean flower known as the rock rose, is believed to have been brought to the rocks by a migrating bird that feeds on insects that eat the seeds, he said.
The new management area resulted from a partnership between DNR, the Georgia Forestry Commission, the Nature Conservancy, Plum Creek Timber Co., the nation's largest landowner, and local officials. DNR received a $1.5 million federal forestry grant to purchase the land. The Nature Conservancy provided another $450,000 and state bonds, another $520,000.
The project will mean preservation of wetland areas and calls for the creation of a working forest with longleaf pines, the types of trees that used to cover the South from Texas to Virginia.
"The project is a huge success," said Tavia McCuen, director of the Nature Conservancy in Georgia. "We've got to continue to look at these private-public partnerships to make great things happen."
"When forests are professionally managed, they contribute greatly to our quality of life, which this property will do for decades," said Ken Stewart, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission.Associated Press via Duluth News Tribune
