Saluda Rivers Connector

The Saluda River Connector bridges a major habitat corridor that builds on a 40-year legacy. On the western edge is Tall Pines, a 1,757-acre forest block The Conservation Fund acquired in 2015 and later transferred to SCDNR. Following Tall Pines west to the South Saluda River, Upstate Forever holds an easement on a property that carries the protected corridor west and north into Pickens County until reaching Scenic Highway 11. Naturaland Trust owns property for over a mile along this stretch of the South Saluda making it SC's most publicly accessible trout stream. Adjacent and across Scenic Highway 11 lies thousands of acres of contiguous protected land from State Parks, Heritage Preserves, easements and Naturaland Trust’s land holdings—the heart of the Mountain Bridge Wilderness. This property connects the foothills to the escarpment and for the first time, connects the Middle Saluda River with the South Saluda River through protected land.

Looking north from atop one of the many ridges on the property, the rolling foothills give way to the Blue Ridge Escarpment and Caesars Head. The hills and mountains on the property are bifurcated by springs and tributaries of the Middle Saluda River. As the streams lead towards the river, beautiful stands of bottomland hardwood anchor the floodplain allowing habitat for turkey, deer, beaver, bear, reptiles and numerous aquatic species.

The conservation community has had their eye on this property and its neighbor Tall Pines for many years. This 850-acre tract was one of the largest forest blocks left to protect in Greenville County's Upstate. When the property went on the market in 2017, Naturaland Trust acted quickly and secured a purchase contract. Without immediate access to funding and with several offers from developers and investors, we had to either borrow the funding or allow this property to slip away, possibly forever.

Opportunities to protect large forest blocks in the South Carolina Upstate are extremely rare. Normally, connecting this much land and diverse habitat requires piecing together small parcels over decades as we have done along the South Saluda River, Highway 11 and the Mountain Bridge Wilderness. This project provides a unique opportunity to protect a large forest block, 2 miles of river on the Middle Saluda, add significant acreage to the matrix of protected land and open myriad recreational opportunities to the public. Biologists with SCDNR have conducted a biodiversity survey on the property have identified a number of species that are on their watch list for the State Wildlife Action Plan. Totaling 127 important species for the state, the list includes 13 mammals, 62 birds, 2 insects, 22 herps, 17 freshwater fish, 1 crayfish, 9 mussels and even one species of leech. This biodiversity can be attributed to the breadth of ecosystems found on this singular tract.

In 2018 Naturaland Trust’s board voted unanimously to take out a loan with AgSouth for the purchase price of the property and making interest payments until the property could be sold to the state. Funding was not a certainty, but we were able to do this because of our faith in our mission and in public support for conservation. The South Carolina Conservation Bank eventually supported this project with a $1,000,000 grant over two phases and we also received a donation from the Fred and Alice Stanback for $100,000. SCDNR’s grant request with USDA’s Forest Legacy Program was successful and they will use the funding to purchase the property from us and assuming ownership.