Cainhoy Plantation owners place half of property into conservation

The owners of the roughly 9,000-acre Cainhoy Plantation announced last week their intention to permanently protect nearly half of the historic property. The protected land area is nearly the size of the Charleston peninsula and will be one of the largest assemblages of conserved lands within city limits, according to a press release from the DI Development Company, the entity managing development of the property on behalf of the owners.

In 1971, the plantation’s previous owner, the late Harry Frank Guggenheim, left the massive parcel to his cousin, Peter Lawson-Johnston Sr., who, along with his family, still holds the property today through various entities. The Daniel Island News first reported on the owners’ planned conservation efforts in December of 2017 in part two of the paper’s series entitled “The Reincarnation of Cainhoy Plantation.”

The owners worked with wildlife biologists and various local conservation groups to identify the most ecologically significant portions of the property, continued the release, and their proposed land protection activities follow those recommendations. The conserved acreage includes a 500+-acre “Nature Sanctuary” that will be professionally managed to promote habitat for a variety of important wildlife and plant species, such as bald eagles, red-cockaded woodpeckers, gopher frogs and longleaf pine, and will be protected with a conservation easement held by Lord Berkeley Conservation Trust (LBCT).

A 100+-acre buffer will be placed along Cainhoy Road, across from the Francis Marion National Forest, to avoid negative impacts to the forest and ensure that it can continue to be managed with prescribed fire, noted the release. Another 3,500 acres of marshland, highlands, wetlands, and upland buffers will be placed under restrictive covenants and will ultimately be conveyed to a nonprofit foundation that will manage all of the protected lands on the property.

As conservator partner, the LBCT will monitor the cumulative protected lands on an annual basis to ensure compliance with the various restrictive covenants. Raleigh West, executive director of the LBCT, explained that the Cooper River and the Francis Marion National Forest were high priorities due to their historical and ecological significance.

“We have had to become more creative and collaborative in our land protection strategies as we approach urban centers where prices are so high,” added West. “By working with the owners of Cainhoy Plantation, we will be able to ensure the security of a large swath of important ecological resources along the Cooper River, within the City of Charleston, without tapping into the very limited pots of public funds.”

West further stated that the Trust will continue to explore opportunities to expand the conservation corridors both on the greater Cainhoy peninsula and throughout the broader focus areas.

“We hope this will help catalyze efforts to protect other vulnerable land holdings in the Cooper River Focus Area.”

The Cainhoy Planned Unit Development Master Plan agreement with the City of Charleston states that the primary goal is “to promote a sensible development pattern and to create a sustainable community that embraces the Lowcountry natural heritage by providing connectivity of habitat, minimizing impacts of development on natural resources and ecological processes, and employing strategies to enhance co-mingling of human habitat and wildlife habitat.”

According to Matt Sloan, president of the DI Development Company, the vision is to create a sustainable and resilient community.

“We’ve been working for several years with various environmental groups to come up with a conservation-minded plan for this property,” said Sloan. “With half of the land being placed in conservation, we’ll be able to offer passive recreational opportunities in an extraordinary natural setting. This will happen on a very large scale that is rarely found in the heart of a metropolitan area. We’re already working on our trails system which will expand to over 100 miles, providing publicly accessible connectivity between all neighborhoods, village centers, the new Philip Simmons K-12 public schools and through some of the most beautiful and historic parts of this property.”

Sloan continued, “After several years of exhaustive ecological and cultural resources studies, we recently filed for our environmental permits. We were asked by the reviewing agencies to do this in a comprehensive manner so all environmental permits are covered under this application for the entire property.”

The Cainhoy Plantation property is expected to accommodate some 9,000 homes as per current plans and will be developed in several phases over the next 20 years.