Colleton County Soil and Water Conservation District

The Soil and Water Conservation districts share a partnership with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and each county has their own district and commissioners. Since "uncle" I.M. Benton is the chairman of the Colleton County district, I decided to attend their planning meeting for their annual banquet, held to grant student conservation awards and to educate their affiliate members about conservation in the county. Reverand Gerald Mabry, an avid deer hunter and prescribed fire advocate, gave the invocation saying "Colleton County has bountiful natural resources and we ask your blessings that our decisions might benefit the citizens of the county." Jennifer Majors is a program coordinator with the Land, Water and Conservation Division of SCDNR. She attends the district meetings in Jasper, Beaufort and Colleton counties. Majors told the district commissioners that Ken Rentiers was the new deputy chief of her divsion, having completed his term as chief of the S.C. Farm Service Agency (FSA). Fred Tritapoe, agent for the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), reported on projects involving longleaf pine plantings, inspection of the Willow Swamp watershed, establishment of field strip buffers and GPS mapping for private landowner projects. Stewardship week activities include a tour of Broxton Bridge plantation, and the banquet on April 28, where the Lowcountry Open Land Trust will speak about their 2008 conservation easement on the 12,000 acre Brosnan Forest, which is part of the ACE Basin Focus Area. Student photo and poster competitions will be a major focus of the banquet, since the Colleton conservation district seeks to educate youth about our natural world. The blog photos depict a wild azalea during spring bloom in front of the longleaf pines that Brosnan Forest is well known for, and the causeway at Brosnan that welcomes visitors to enjoy the view across the fishing ponds.