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YEMASSEE — For nearly three decades, the Nemours Wildlife Foundation has flown under the radar, at least as far as the general public might be concerned. That's changing as the foundation is taking its first steps toward allowing public access to its impressive Lowcountry property. The 10,000-acre research-oriented, private preserve is tucked into the northern tip of Beaufort County, hemmed in by U.
S. Route 17 to the north and the Combahee River to the east. The gates that mark the driveway onto the site are easy to miss if you're speeding along from Beaufort to Charleston.
That's not exactly an accident. Neither is the foundation's low public profile. The foundation has not been open to the general public for the entirety of its nearly 30-year existence.
It's not a park, explained Andrew Bridges, the foundation's president and CEO. "One of things we'll have to be cognizant of as we grow is keeping this as a protected area for endangered species and researchers, while at the same time engaging more with the community," he added. In mid-November, the first of a monthly series of tours will begin, giving the public a rare opportunity to see the work that goes on behind the gates.
It's the first time in the foundation's history that the general public can gain access to the property, said Heather Kraus, education and outreach coordinator at Nemours. "We definitely want to increase our ability to engage with people. We want to share all of this.
We want people to know what we're doing. We want to have a positive impact on conservation," Bridges said. From the beginning, education — along with research and land stewardship — has been one of the pillars upon which the foundation was built.
While visitor drop-ins can be incompatible with research and stewardship activity going on in marshes and fields that make up the property, there has long been an opportunity for groups like bird watchers to request a private tour . The new public tour is an expansion of those opportunities. The foundation took another step in that direction this year when it cut the ribbon on the Eugene and Laura duPont Conservation Hall, a 1,750-square-foot facility named after the foundation's late founders that will host visitors and researchers.
The Eugene and Laura duPont Conservation Hall, part of the 10,000-acre Nemours Wildlife Foundation in Yemassee. The hall was opened in April 2024. Previously, the responsibility for education fell to either the foundation president or the scientists conducting work on site.
Three years ago, an increasing emphasis on education and public outreach led to Kraus's hiring. This year, she got the foundation's first public outreach intern. Kraus hopes to draw more visitors in so they can begin to develop a sense of place about the ACE Basin and understand its importance within the region's landscape.
Nemours' strategic outreach plans call for programming across the full spectrum of age groups. The ACE Basin covers 1.6 million acres of the Lowcountry in the watersheds of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers.
One of the largest undeveloped wetland and ecosystems on the Atlantic Coast, the ACE Basin has been called one of the "last great places" on Earth by the Nature Conservancy. Wildlife refuge in Charleston County added to Reconstruction Era National Historic Network "Hopefully, whether we work with kids or retirees, they're going to go out into their community and teach others about what makes this place special," Kraus said. A central feature of the Nemours property is its rice fields.
An estimated 350,000 acres were once cultivated for rice in the Southeast. About 250,000 of those acres were in South Carolina. "Despite how wild it looks, this is one of the most heavily altered ecosystems in the world," Bridges said.
"This would have been forested wetlands. They're now rice fields." The impoundments and infrastructure necessary to flood and drain the rice fields were all dug by hand by enslaved people, and Bridges is keenly aware of their cultural significance.
Set off U.S. Route 17, a sign marks the entrance to the 10,000-acre Nemours Wildlife Foundation in Yemassee, Oct.
16, 2024. The foundation is beginning to offer limited public tours nearly 30 years after it was established at Nemours Plantation to promote conservation and scientific research. After rice production stopped, the impoundments became important resources for local wildlife and those species that migrated through the region in the spring and fall.
They provide a consistent resource for the migrating birds, unlike the tidal marshes which are constantly shifting as the tides ebb and flow through the marsh. "Maintaining (the rice fields) from both a cultural and a wildlife perspective is really important. These are really a gem of the region," Bridges said.
Waterfowl research has been a focal point over the years, but it has not been the sole focus. Currently, the foundation is working with S.C.
Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine how to best manage the impoundments to encourage usage by black rails , which were listed as a threatened species in 2020 under the Endangered Species Act.
Populations of black rails have plummeted by 90 percent in the Mid-Atlantic states, but populations have persisted in South Carolina's ACE Basin and Santee Delta Area . Another research project is looking at the accumulation of microplastics in alligators. The research may eventually help model how microplastics bioaccumulate in humans.
Research projects tend to avoid esoteric topics in favor of practical applicability toward the foundation's core objectives. "We want to make sure that it's applicable and practical, and that it can translate to other land managers up and down the coast," said Mike McShane, chairman of the board of director for Nemours. It's a philosophy that has garnered notice.
SC's amazing Santee Delta is full of historical mysteries. A new project seeks to solve them. “Nemours Wildlife Foundation is a fantastic partner not only to organizations like ours that are working to protect the landscape from the ACE Basin to the Savannah River, but also to every kind of conservation pursuit you can imagine," said David Ray, chief conservation officer with the Lowcountry Land Trust .
"There's extraordinary breadth to what the foundation does for the community.” While the black rails and alligator research are good and valuable initiatives, the project that drew the most enthusiasm from Bridges is the newly established ecopasture initiative . Ecopasture, he noted, is a term coined during the course of the research.
"I think this will be one of our signature pieces going forward," Bridges said. "I can talk about this forever." The ecopasture initiative studies the full ecosystem response to low-intensity cattle grazing.
There is, according to Bridges, great interest in the topic around the world. South Carolina pilot provides unique view on conservation — from the skies above "Historically, there would have been grazers out on the landscape throughout the world. People have wiped out most of the large grazers, but these systems have all evolved to function with that type of interaction," Bridges said.
The study follows the impact of 24 cows foraging on 263 acres. The cows selected for the study were not run-of-the-mill heifers. They're a relatively rare breed called pineywoods cattle.
Descended from cattle brought to the New World by the Spanish, they've adapted to survive and thrive in the landscape of the Southeast. A pineywoods cow, a variety uniquely adapted to the Lowcountry landscape, rests on the Nemours Wildlife Foundation property in Yemassee, Oct. 16, 2024.
The cows are part of an ongoing experiment studying the beneficial impacts of reintroducing grazing animals to the landscape. There are myriad potential benefits to this type of grazing, according to Bridges. Grasses respond favorably to being grazed.
Carbon is sequestered underground as it's absorbed from cow patties by the grass' roots system. The need for burning to thin the underbrush is diminished. There is a belief that population declines of grassland birds like bobwhite quail coincided with the removal of grazing animals from the landscape.
The return of large grazers could aid the return of quail, which could provide economic opportunities for farmers, who can lease their land for hunting. There may also be greenhouse gas benefits. Methane released from cows — through their burps — is lower in ones that are grass-fed as opposed to grain-fed.
Grain-fed cattle are the standard of industrialized cattle farming. There is a possibility that forage-fed cattle will produce less methane than grass-fed cows as they're feeding on material they've evolved to digest. There has never been a study on forage-fed cattle because it's a rarely utilized practice.
Turtles, snakes and salt marshes. Research projects abound in Beaufort County for USCB staff. "Ultimately, what we hope to do is demonstrate, promote and scientifically validate a model that will allow small landowners to have another source of income from their property, which promotes land conservation.
At the same time, it promotes wildlife habitat. All of these things fit together," Bridges said. Over a period of about 20 years, the Wilmington, Del.
-based duPont family accumulated the land that would eventually become the Nemours Wildlife Foundation through the purchase of several former plantations and other land holdings. Eugene duPont III built a home on the property and lived there for some time. Toward the end of his life, concern for the property's future led him to take steps to protect it in perpetuity.
A painted white stripe at the base of this tree indicates that an artificial nest cavity was created to benefit red-cockaded woodpeckers in the 10,000-acre Nemours Wildlife Foundation in Yemassee. "He wanted to keep the land protected. He also cared about science, research and education.
He set up a foundation, which became Nemours shortly after his passing," explained Bridges. Management of a 10,000-acre property is a costly endeavor. Day-to-day expenses are covered by an endowment from the duPont family.
Funding for research and educational programming comes from outside sources, a responsibility that falls to Sara Miller, the foundation's donor relations and development coordinator. Looking into the future, Bridges hopes to see a continuing expansion of the foundation's impact. "We don't want to just repeat what's being done somewhere else," McShane said.
"I don't know that there's great value in that. One of the principle objectives has always been to be a good demonstration of good land stewardship and management practices.'.
