The Dugdown Mountain Corridor is coming together as one of Georgia’s most critical wild animal pathways. The multi-player project—U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, transportation agencies, The Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, county governments and private landowners—would include nearly 100,000 acres of protected and conserved land. About 13% is already in conservation, including wildlife management areas, private easements, longleaf pine and hardwood forests, hatchery-stocked streams, and hike, bike and canoe trails. 

More than $4 million raised from a variety of public and nonprofit partners will go to the acquisition of 2,197 acres adjacent to the Treat Mountain Voluntary Public Access area near Cedartown. Another 8,000 acres nearby will be added to the corridor by year’s end.

“Animals used to be able to move all the way through Georgia,” says Trina Morris, a wildlife conservation manager with Georgia DNR. “But that’s not happening anymore because we have so many roads, traffic, people. It’s really a dangerous place for wildlife. But you just can’t do conservation without connecting these isolated habitats. And we want to sustain those animal populations into the future.”

Georgia’s wildlife agency, like most around the country, is revising its State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP), which triggers federal funding for conservation, with maps highlighting wildlife corridors. The plan, mandated by USFWS, should be released this fall or winter.

Boneset, butterflies and longleaf pine

To build a corridor, it takes all kinds of land. The 1,000-acre tracts of commercial pine plantation grab the headlines, but the little pieces—a hundred acres here, two hundred there—fill critical holes in a wildlife-friendly pathway. 

And so it is with the latest addition to Dugdown and the eastern anchor of the corridor at the Paulding Forest Wildlife Management Area, just 35 miles from downtown Atlanta. Georgia recently took control of an unnamed 200-acre tract near Rockmart. Plots of montane longleaf pine—a rare and dwindling majestic pine which affords delicious habitat for all manner of at-risk birds, snakes and amphibians—dot the south-facing hillsides intertwined with low-flowing creeks and old logging roads. Its needles carpet the ground in spots; its over-sized cones beg to be kicked. 

A recent stroll on a warm, end-of-summer-day uncovered cloudless sulphur butterflies, dragonflies and bumble bees flitting among the boneset, goldenrod, broomstraw and sedges. Deer and wild hog tracks, nearest a dried-out creek, heralded the coming season. 

The Paulding Forest and nearby Sheffield WMAs sit squarely at the intersection of three distinct geologic regions: the Ridge and Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Piedmont. Wildlife once flourished across the unique assemblage of forests, prairies and streams.

But that was then. 

Cold and frustrated after two days tromping across the north Georgia mountains, six deer hunters from Paulding County had had enough. It was 1946 and deer across Georgia had been hunted to near-extirpation. The hunters decided to create their own 12,000-acre hunting preserve in their backyard, bought 20 deer from South Carolina, and agreed not to hunt the land for five years. One-hundred wild turkey eggs and 20,000 fingerling rainbow trout were added to the wildlife mix.

Georgia first bought some land—3,200 acres—in 1989 at Sheffield WMA and the corridor was born. In the early 2000s, USFWS, Georgia DNR and partners began buying up adjoining lands at Sheffield and Paulding Forest WMA’s. Within 15 years more than $24 million from state, federal and nonprofit sources translated into an additional 3,700 acres. In 2006, Paulding County residents voted overwhelmingly to tax themselves $15 million to buy up another 2,500 acres. 

So far, more than $90 million has been spent building, linking, expanding, conserving and restoring the 32,000-acre Paulding and Sheffield wildlife management areas into metro Atlanta’s premier hunting, fishing, hiking, biking (the Silver Comet Trail runs through it en route to Alabama) and nature-loving preserve. It’s a Top Ten state-managed deer hunting spot and No. 2 for wild turkeys. 

Raccoon Creek attracts trout fishermen across the region. A tributary of the wonderfully biodiverse Etowah River, the creek is home to 43 native fish species and numerous mussels, many at-risk, threatened or endangered. By comparison, the famed Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest tallies 31 native fish species.

“The idea of being able to connect Paulding Forest with the Talladega National Forest is a win, win, win for all stakeholders,” says Eric Prowell, the Service’s lead biologist in Georgia for the (federally threatened) Cherokee and (endangered) Etowah darters. He has helped build the Dugdown corridor over the last two decades—well before the idea of a corridor was even hatched.

“To have this vision of what we want to happen, and to actually have the tools and resources to achieve that vision, is the most exciting thing about it,” Prowell continues. “This is feasible. We can do it. It’s great for everybody.”

And animals, too.

Protecting bears, bats, birds

Wildlife corridors come in all shapes and sizes, yet they all share one common goal: allowing animals (and plants) to move from one safe habitat to another in search of food, water and mates with healthy genes. Take Georgia’s bears, for example. Once nearly killed off, black bears flourish across the hills of north Georgia and the Okefenokee Swamp. There’s a population in mid-Georgia, though, that’s struggling because it’s cut off from breeding partners with good genes. State Route 96, Interstates 75 and 16, Macon and Warner Robins, cotton fields and kaolin mines prevent easy passage for wandering bears. Wildlife corridors would let mid-state bears, and others, roam more freely in search of romantic assignations.

Take Raccoon Creek, as another example. Millions of federal, state and nonprofit dollars have gone into buying up farmland, establishing conservation easements, restoring stream banks, and improving fish passages along the riparian corridor that connects to the Etowah River. At-risk fish and mussels have been reintroduced to the creek.

And then there are the bats. You’d think bats and birds wouldn’t need contiguous, conserved lands with their ability to fly over roadways and subdivisions to find suitable habitat. But avian, migrating creatures need safe passageways around sprawling cities, tall buildings, wind turbines and predators (like cats). They need forests, caves, culverts or mines to roost. And, bats in particular, oftentimes seek out the same, safe wintering spots year after year. 

They need all the help they can get. Georgia has lost maybe 85-90% of its tri-colored bats the last decade. They succumb to white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease wiping out millions of hibernating bats. The Service is proposing endangered status for tri-colored bats which once ranged over 39 states.

“Even though bats are migratory, they’re very intelligent and retain high fidelity to winter sites,” says Pete Pattavina, the white-nose syndrome coordinator for the Service in the Southeast. “They maintain a visual map of their migratory corridors where it’s safe to stop over or aggregate with other species for higher survivability. Having a great, healthy forest between two metropolitan areas like Atlanta and Birmingham or Huntsville is very important.”

A triple-box culvert underneath Interstate 20 near Carrollton, and close to the Dugdown Corridor, is home to one of Georgia’s largest colonies of wintering tri-colored bats. Forests on either side of the interstate afford important habitat for the 150 or so tri-coloreds that return to the culvert each year, as well as thousands of Southeastern myotis bats and a few, endangered gray bats.

“If you have places that are completely cut off, and animals can’t use them, then that completely blocks off genetic flow,” says Morris, a 20-year veteran of Georgia’s DNR. “A large roadway can completely separate populations. So, the important work we can do is conserving habitat outside winter sites. We have to make sure we’re keeping everything connected.”

‘A top conservation priority’

Which is where SWAPs come in. Georgia, and other states, create lists of “species of greatest conservation need” and pinpoint where they live. The habitats are then designated “conservation opportunity areas”—public and private lands—and, potentially, linked together as wildlife corridors. The once-a-decade SWAPs are then submitted to the Service in hopes of receiving funding via state and tribal wildlife grants.

Georgia received $1.6 million the last fiscal year in state wildlife grants.

“Ideally, all major conservation areas within the State should be connected eventually,” reads Georgia’s 2015 SWAP. “At minimum, development should be avoided in these areas via easements, at maximum the land should be acquired by the state and restored to a natural condition.”

Georgia takes the SWAP seriously, consulting dozens of conservation partners, detailing which animals, plants and habitats deserve protection, and looking far and wide for funding sources. More than 100,000 acres have been acquired for conservation and recreation since 2005; another 300,000 acres have been protected via partners and easements.

The Lower Altamaha River Corridor is Georgia’s gem of a conservation corridor. A 40-mile stretch of river and adjoining lands, from the Wolf Island National Wildlife Refuge up to the town of Jesup, have either been bought up or protected via easement or federal, state and nonprofit holdings. 

Other corridors, according to the 2015 SWAP: the Ocmulgee River; longleaf pine forests in the state’s southwest corner; the Fall Line through the state’s midsection; the Chattahoochee National Forest across north Georgia.

“It’s really important that we have the SWAP in place,” Morris says. “It makes it easy to say, ‘Hey, we need federal funding to move on this priority species or that priority habitat.’ It helps to not have to constantly prioritize or re-prioritize plans and offers a clear path forward for conservation. It also helps us build relationships.”

Dan Chapman

Dan Chapman writes about conservation in the Southeast for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. He is the author of A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir's Journey through an Endangered Land.