News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The calendar may say April but for leaders in White County and at Tennessee’s Nature Conservancy, today could be Christmas.
“The Nature Conservancy started in Tennessee in 1978, so we are entering our 40th anniversary,” Nature Conservancy State Director Terry Cook said. “I can think of no better early birthday present than this terrific donation by Bridgestone.”
Bridgestone donated some 5,800 acres of land along the Chestnut Mountain section of White County to the Nature Conservancy Wednesday. It represents the largest donation in the Tennessee chapter’s history.
“I may be a little prejudice, but I think it’s the most beautiful spot in the state,” White County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said. “There’s no other area quite like it. The hills and valleys, the rivers, the caves, the waterfalls.”
Firestone bought the land in the 1970s. Bridgestone acquired it when they purchased Firestone in 1988. Cook said the Nature Conservancy began working with Bridgestone in 2014 on a forestry management plan for the area. About a year ago, the company began exploring a donation of the land.
“It just adds a significant piece to a great matrix of conservation lands in the Cumberland Plateau,” Cook said. “We are extremely happy.”
The land can also be a boon to tourism in the region, according to Robinson.
“Give us a little time to get some trails in there and some organization and it will be a shining gem for the whole Upper Cumberland,” Robinson said.
“It is a true wilderness experience,” Cook said. “People will travel from near and far to have that type of accessibility. We think that’s part of the conservation picture.”
Cook said the land offers “tremendous bio-diversity” in all species of trees, plants and animals. The land also borders state-owned property of 50 percent of its sides. Both TDEC and TWRA own land in the region that also was donated by Bridgestone.
Robinson said Bridgestone serves as an example of how to contribute to the communities it serves.
