Gopher Tortoise

Col. Matthew Higer, 96th Test Wing vice commander, bends down to release a gopher tortoise into its new home deep within the Eglin Air Force Base. Photo by Samuel King Jr., U.S. Air Force.

Boosting the gopher tortoise

August 22, 2017 | 8 minute read

Atlanta, Georgia – Typically, animals like the Florida panther lose their Southern habitat, dwindle perilously close to extinction and end up on the endangered species list. Federal, state and non-profit groups hustle to raise money and conserve land to bolster the populations with the chance, one day, of delisting it. The gopher tortoise, though, just might buck the trend. An at-risk species in Georgia, Florida and parts of Alabama and South Carolina, the tank-like tortoise is the recipient of an unprecedented, high-dollar collaboration between government agencies, NGOs and the private sector to keep gopherus polyphemus from ever gracing the threatened or endangered species list. Learn more...

A many wearing a wide-brimmed hat walking through a forest next to a young longleaf pine seedling.

Reese Thompson is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others to conserve a natural longleaf pine stand on his south Georgia land. Photo by Bill O’Brian, USFWS.

Longleaf pine for Georgians

August 22, 2017 | 9 minute read

Longleaf pine trees once blanketed the landscape from southern Virginia to east Texas. They were majestic hallmarks of the Southeast. Learn more...

A gentleman with a grey mustache standing next to a mature longleaf pine tree.

Longleaf pines, says Salem Saloom, are "part of our heritage." Photo by Mark Davis, USFWS.

Growing trees, saving species

August 9, 2017 | 8 minute read

If one of the Southeast’s signature species is the gopher tortoise, so, too, is the towering pine that shades its burrow. The longleaf pine is one of the Southeastern United States’ great trees. When European settlers came to North America, they discovered Pinus palustris. It stretched across 90 million acres, from east Texas to Virginia, and was just what a young nation needed to grow. The wood from the conifer built homes, sailing masts and even roads. Learn more...

Two finely manicured hands reach for a tiny gopher tortoise hiding in its shell on sandy soil.

A gopher tortoise hiding in its shell. Photo by Ben Williams.

Florida couple dedicates property to conservation

July 20, 2017 | 2 minute read

Ben and LouAnn Williams own approximately 3,400 acres of pinelands interspersed with bottomland hardwoods in Putnam County, Florida, between Jacksonville and Daytona Beach. Their property contributes to conservation on a regional scale because it is adjacent to publicly owned conservation areas, creating an important link in a chain of conservation lands from central Florida to the Georgia state line. Sandhill after prescribed burn. Photo by Ben Williams. In 2012, the Williams’ began establishing longleaf pine on their property and reintroduced prescribed burning. Learn more...

An open gate surrounded by live oaks covered in Spanish moss.

Altama Plantation. Photo by Nicole Vidal, USFWS.

A gem for hunters and hikers alike

July 12, 2017 | 4 minute read

Brunswick, Georgia – Altama Plantation is perhaps the most critical, and intriguing, piece of property along the entire Altamaha River corridor. It was here in the early 1800s that plantation owner James Hamilton Couper introduced the Dutch system of tidal floodgates to grow rice. He planted sugar cane and built a refinery whose red-brick remains still stand. Couper, a noted scientist, also recorded the first eastern indigo snake, a threatened species which bears his name (Drymarchon couperi). Learn more...

A gentlman with gray hair poses for the camera with a smile and his arms crossed.

Mr. Dink NeSmith has a special relationship with the Altamaha River. Photo by Nicole Vidal, USFWS.

Local landowner fights for the Altamaha

July 12, 2017 | 3 minute read

Jesup, Georgia – “Well now, welcome to the swamp.” Dink NeSmith stands astride a weathered wooden dock on Sandy Lake, a meandering offshoot of the Altamaha River. To some, the oxbow lake is nothing but a muddy, buggy, alligator-friendly bog. To NeSmith, it’s an open-air cathedral in all its natural “majesty.” “God put it here a long time ago,” he preached, “and it’s on loan to my family and me and we want to do our part to make sure it remains a clean, safe environment for our great, great, great, great grandchildren. Learn more...

The sun sets over a lush green marsh cut in half by a calm brackish channel.

Salt marsh along the Altamaha River. Photo by Nicole Vidal, USFWS.

Many partners work together to protect “the Amazon of the South” for generations to come

July 12, 2017 | 13 minute read

It meanders 137 miles through the wild heart of Georgia, a blackwater beauty that nourishes longleaf pine forests, cypress swamps, saltwater estuaries and the barrier islands that protect the Atlantic coast and migratory birds alike. Learn more...

Two men standing in front of a beige tank riddled with bullet holes.

A tank littered with bullet holes at Townsend bombing range. Photo by Nicolve Vidal, USFWS.

The military embraces conservation

July 12, 2017 | 4 minute read

Townsend, Georgia – U.S. Marine Corps jets and helicopters rain thousand-pound bombs and 30-caliber bullets on a slice of the Altamaha River corridor. Gopher tortoises, flatwood salamanders and eastern indigo snakes benefit mightily. Say what? Townsend bombing range. Photo by Nicole Vidal, USFWS. Welcome to a looking-glass world where bombs are good, the Pentagon is an environmental agency and the ever-expanding Townsend Bombing Range along the northwestern edge of the corridor protects critical greenways and endangered species. Learn more...

Wiry pine trees sparsley dot a sandy landscape.

A field of young longleaf pine at the Coastal Headwaters Forest. Photo by Dan Chapman, USFWS.

A harmonious future for profits, pine and at-risk species along the Florida-Alabama line

May 9, 2017 | 7 minute read

Pace, Florida — Longleaf pine forests once covered 90 million acres from Virginia to Texas, a bio-diverse swath of timber prized by shipbuilders and gopher tortoises alike. Sprawling cities, large farms and commercial pine plantations, though, replaced much of the longleaf habitat. Today, less than five million acres remain. Conservationists’ goal of eight million acres by 2025 seemed laughable. Until Resource Management Service and Jimmy Bullock came along. Map of the Coastal Headwaters Forest by the Conservation Fund and RMS. Learn more...

A head-on photograph of two grey fighter jets flying in formation with a blue sky and clouds in the background.

Two F-22 Raptors from Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., fly in formation. Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Thomas Meneguin, U.S. Air Force.

Biologists on bases: Fish and Wildlife joins the military

April 26, 2017 | 6 minute read

Melanie Kaeser is embedded with the military at Tyndall Air Force Base. She patrols the pine forests and swampy wetlands as F-16s and F-22s maneuver overhead. Her mission: protect those in harm’s way - the gopher tortoises, the St. Andrews Beach mice and the Godfrey’s butterworts. Learn more...

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