Audubon Sanctuary Named Wetland of International Importance
WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) – The world’s largest remaining virgin forest of bald cypress and tupelo gum trees, including 1,500 year-old trees long vanished from the rest of North America, has been designated as a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance.
South Carolina’s Francis Beidler Forest was officially designated on Friday at the annual meeting of the U.S. National Ramsar Committee, hosted by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies in the Hall of States, Washington DC, in conjunction with a briefing for the Congressional Wildlife Refuge Caucus.
Adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands promotes conservation of vital wetlands habitats around the world. This intergovernmental treaty provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources.
Francis Beidler Forest (Photo courtesy
National Audubon Society)
The 15,908 acre Beidler Forest is the 23rd U.S. wetland to be chosen for Ramsar status.
The forest is principally owned by the National Audubon Society, with a parcel owned by The Nature Conservancy and a small parcel belonging to a private landowner, and a model management and expansion plan is being implemented. Audubon has managed the forest sanctuary for 35 years.
“This designation underscores the importance of protecting and preserving our wetlands; when they disappear, so do birds and other wildlife, as well as natural flood protection,” said John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society. “The importance of a system like Beidler Forest cannot be overstated.”
Favored by hundreds of thousands of birds that migrate to South Carolina after wintering in South America, the region was recognized as an Important Bird Area in 2001. Some 140 species of birds are supported by this wetland forest and many of them, such as the whip-poor-will and the Eastern meadowlark, are on Audubon’s list of Common Birds in Decline.
The forest’s red-headed woodpecker, swallow-tailed kite, wood thrush, prothonotary warbler, Kentucky warbler, prairie warbler, painted bunting, and Swainson’s warbler are on the Audubon WatchList.
“Beidler Forest is one of only a few sites in the U.S. recognized as both an Important Bird Area and a Ramsar site,” said John Cecil, director of the Important Bird Areas Program for Audubon and the Society’s Representative on the U.S. Ramsar Committee.
“This dual acknowledgement celebrates not only the beauty and rich biodiversity found at Beidler, but the collaboration of Audubon, its partners, and the communities in and around Beidler. Each has played an essential role in conserving this jewel,” Cecil said.
The site is used by bird and nature enthusiasts and students, as well as fishers and hunters in some parts. The Audubon Center at Beidler Forest offers environmental educational opportunities. In 2007 over 12,000 people visited the center.
The Beidler Forest acts to improve and maintain the quality of the waters flowing through it, but high levels of mercury have been found in the fish. Logging, farm runoff, and urban sprawl from Charleston are seen as potential threats from outside the site.
Farming has replaced forest over of the adjacent uplands. Droughts over the past several decades have triggered interest by farmers in damming tributary swales as emergency sources of irrigation water.
Other threats to the ecosystem include logging, nearby limestone quarries and fill-dirt mines, nonpoint source water runoff from surrounding farms, farming on the bluffs above the floodplain, and poorly designed or maintained private septic systems that pose a risk of bacterial contamination to the Four Holes Swamp and its tributaries.
The newly designated Ramsar wetland lies along a broad, flat-bottomed alluvial valley within the Four Holes Swamp. More than 300 vertebrates and 300 plants depend upon the site for survival, and a number of threatened or vulnerable species are present, such as the IUCN Red Listed flatwoods salamander, Ambystoma cingulatum, and several bat and snake species.
Threatened plants include the Southern twayblade, green-fly orchid, and shadow-witch orchid and the dwarf trillium, Trillium pusillum.
“These wetlands are essential to the people of South Carolina,” said Norm Brunswig, director of Audubon South Carolina.
“Beidler’s 430,000 acre watershed represents one-third of the total watershed of the longest, free-flowing black water river in the U.S. The Edisto. Audubon’s work upstream helps to guarantee the quantity, quality and delivery schedule of water downstream to places like the ACE Basin National Estuarine Reserve and Wildlife Refuge,” Brunswig explained.
Find the Francis Beidler Forest online at: sc.audubon.org
The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is online at: www.ramsar.org
