For decades a variety of private conservation organizations, local citizens, and state and federal agencies have dreamed of establishing a public wildlife refuge within the southern Cumberland Plateau region along the Tennessee/Alabama border, and now that is becoming a reality.
Earlier this summer, The Nature Conservancy acquired 87 acres of land from the Niedergeses family located in Franklin County, Tennessee, adjoining the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency’s (TWRA) Bear Hollow Mountain Wildlife Management Area. The largest portion of the $350,000 acquisition was provided by the Open Space Institute, with additional support coming from The Tucker Foundation and others. This transaction and the property’s upcoming transfer to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) in September will officially establish the long-awaited refuge.
Refuge Importance:
- In the conservation and scientific communities, it is widely understood and agreed that connected networks of resilient lands and waters must be conserved at a large scale to allow nature to adapt to climate change. The Niedergeses property is located within a matrix of public and private forested lands that will be essential for climate change adaptation and resiliency for generations to come.
- The Appalachian Mountains, which include the Cumberland Plateau region in Tennessee and Alabama, shelter a rich variety of species and diverse ecological and human communities. In fact, the Appalachians are on par with the Amazon rainforest and Kenya’s grasslands as one of the most globally important landscapes for climate change resilience and conserving biodiversity.
- Wildlife refuges create new public recreation opportunities and increased tourism revenue for the local community.
- The newly established Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge will contribute to President Bidens’s America the Beautiful initiative, which has a goal of conserving at least 30 percent of the nation's lands and waters by 2030 for people and nature.
- The Paint Rock River's headwaters lie in Franklin County, Tennessee, where they flow south toward the confluence of Estill Fork and Hurricane Creek in northwest Jackson County, Alabama. This refuge will help protect the headwaters first to benefit water quality, wildlife, and recreational opportunities downstream.