The Alachua Conservations Trust (ACT) recently partnered with landowner Peggi Young to protect her 197-acre place in northeast Levy County.
According to an ACT press release, Young has practiced land stewardship for several decades on her GHS Farms. She runs a managed cow-calf operation on pasture and native range, which made it eligible for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) competitive Agricultural Land Easement (ALE) Program.
“The property boasts diverse native ground cover including wiregrass and five different species of milkweed, mature flat-topped longleaf pines and wildlife species like gopher tortoise and the federally protected eastern indigo snake,” the release stated.
The conservation easement will allow the property to remain privately owned and is compatible with working lands. Young and ACT joined efforts with multiple private partners, state and federal to conserve habitat in the Rainbow Springs Basin.
“Utilizing grant funds to purchase a conservation easement not only protects the landscape but is also an investment a landowner can use to further manage and protect their property,” said ACT director Erica Hernandez in the press release. “ACT is in a unique position to work with many partners and leverage the resources necessary to help owners hold on to their land and maintain its natural character.”
The conservation easement will buffer state land while protecting regions of aquifer recharge and karst windows in the Floridan Aquifer.
“Over my many years here, I have learned to love and appreciate the sandhills, the endangered longleaf pine/wiregrass community, said Young in the press release. “So much beauty, some of which requires changing the scale of reference and looking more closely. We are so grateful to ACT for ensuring that it will be protected in perpetuity from the staggering growth that is happening to so much of our beautiful state.”
Through conservation easements, ACT has protected more than 6,600 acres of private lands. Since January, ACT has purchased 128 acres along the Santa Fe River, doubled its footprint around Orange Lake with an 84-acre acquisition, bought acreage adjacent to Orange Lake from the Sawallis family and linked Price’s Scrub State Park in Marion County with the Barr Hammock Preserve in Alachua County.
ACT works with local, state, and federal funding programs to help landowners protect and manage their land through conservation easements, conservation land sales, or habitat restoration activities.