South Carolina is making strides in protecting places we shouldn’t destroy

I was born and raised on the Isle of Palms, and during the 1970s I would camp and hunt on the north end of my island home in dunes that were really wild.

My brother and I spent weekends in Price’s Inlet, eating only what we caught and encountering nary a soul.

Mt. Pleasant had less than 7,000 people.

We hunted, camped and fished the largely untouched Cainhoy Peninsula and ACE Basin.

And Boone Hall Plantation was in the boonies.

But today the north end of the Isle of Palms is Wild Dunes, the community.

You can virtually walk across the boats crowding Price’s Inlet on a summer weekend.

Mt. Pleasant is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in the nation with 90,000 people.

The Cainhoy Peninsula is unrecognizable — and Mt. Pleasant has enveloped Boone Hall.

The threat that this exponential growth presents to our natural resources and quality of life is why I authored the South Carolina Conservation Bank Act.

I wanted to address this threat through an incentive-based approach to conservation that respects property rights.

I wanted to accomplish conservation by negotiation and compensation, not regulation.

The Conservation Bank does just that.

It establishes a mechanism to fund conservation through a competitive grant process.

And it funds government agencies to purchase fee simple title, and land trusts to purchase conservation easements, which are legal documents that allow property owners to sell or gift development rights to a nonprofit land trust in perpetuity. The land trust, meanwhile, enforces the terms of the easement.

But each grant requires leverage; every dollar granted must produce multiple dollars’ worth of conservation.

This incentive-based approach of conservation by negotiation has empowered the Conservation Bank to protect 310,000 acres in 15 years at a bargain rate of $500 per acre.

It has funded almost 82,000 acres of public parks and wildlife management areas, and 228,000 acres of private land protected in perpetuity with conservation easements.

Recently the South Carolina Conservation Bank, in conjunction with the Charleston County Greenbelt Program, funded a conservation easement on historic Boone Hall Plantation.

It will be enforced by the Lowcountry Land Trust, and Boone Hall owner Willie McRae granted the conservation easement.

The Charleston County Greenbelt Program was modeled after the Conservation Bank upon my suggestion.

In the case of Boone Hall, the two programs funded approximately 25% of the easement value; McRae graciously donated the remaining 75%.

The Conservation Bank has likewise protected other iconic Lowcountry properties such as:

▪ Morris Island, Fort Pemberton and Angel Oak in Charleston County.

▪ Lemon Island and Chisolm Plantation in Beaufort County; Bay Creek Park on Edisto Beach.

▪ More than 11,000 acres in Colleton County.

This collaborative approach to conservation can lead to great accomplishments on an ecosystem scale. Boone Hall is a prime example: the easement permits no more than seven new homes on 598 acres.

The renowned environmentalist John Sawhill once said that “a society is defined not only by what it creates, but also by what it refuses to destroy.”

McRae, the Conservation Bank, Greenbelt Program and Lowcountry Land Trust have added Boone Hall to those iconic places that we have refused to destroy. The Lowcountry owes them all a great debt of gratitude, as do our future generations.

State Sen. Chip Campsen represents District 43, which includes Charleston, Beaufort and Colleton counties.