State Can Start To Pay Back Nature Conservancy, Thanks to Federal Grant

The State of Tennessee will soon be able to begin paying off the state’s largest public land acquisition since the Great Smoky Mountains, thanks to a 4-point-1 million dollar grant from the US Forest Service.

Two-and-a-half years ago, the state secured access to 200 square miles of land in the Cumberland Mountains. A portion came in the form of easements on privately owned land, paid for by the Nature Conservancy. The state agreed to pay the organization back over time. The Nature Conservancy’s Gina Hancock says the federal grant, announced Wednesday, will cover more than a third of that cost.

The land in question adjoins the state’s Frozen Head and Sundquist Natural Areas, and is already being managed by state agencies. Hancock likes to call it the “heart of the Cumberlands.”

“If you saw it from the air, from a helicopter, you would just be flying over ridgeline after ridgeline. You would see the elk that have been reintroduced by TWRA running around, you would see roads for hiking. You can hunt on these tracts, you can camp.”

The federal grant is the largest in a group of more than thirty awards announced this week by the Forest Service.

The Nature Conservancy is still seeking “forest legacy funding” to help pay for the remainder of the easements.

State Forest Acquisition Opens, Sharing Begins
Friday, November 09th, 2007

Land Forum Sells North Cumberland Conservation Plan, Ramsey Questions
Friday, February 23rd, 2007

**Udated Version – WPLN originally reported that the grant would help close out the deal between the the Tennessee Nature Conservancy and the state for the land. We regret the error.

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