Currents: science and conservation

Botany Bay Plantation WMA open for public use

Bo Petersen

The Post and Courier

Monday, August 4, 2008

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

Botany Bay includes cultural resouces such as this early 1800s icehouse.

‘It’s quintessential Edisto Island, sweeping beauty all along.’

EDISTO ISLAND — The cocoon of live oaks awes visitors on the road to the state’s newest nature preserve — the first hint of just how singular a place Botany Bay Plantation is.

The play of light, shade and massive limbs is strangely familiar: Botany Bay Road has been photographed so often, it’s an iconic image of Edisto Island and the Lowcountry. At the road’s end is the entrance to a nearly 5,000- acre oceanfront plantation that was willed by its former owner to the people of South Carolina.

The centuries-old farm is a vista of hardwoods and pine stands, crop fields, salt marshes, hummock islands and a maritime forest beach with its own “boneyard” — a ghost forest of dead trees in the frothy surf.

The spread includes a three-mile motor tour trail past 19th-century brick and tabby structures, 20 more miles of trails for hiking, biking, birding and horseback riding, fishing ponds and a “throw” launch into Osceola Creek for paddle-powered boats.

And now the public can view it all. The Botany Bay Plantation Wildlife Management Area was opened to public access in July.

It’s on a tract so compact that a casual hiker or biker with a backpack could roam it in a day and finish off with a dip in the sea. The first state-recorded visitor to Botany Bay, birder Hal Currey of Sullivan’s Island, saw or heard 43 species, and wasn’t even trying.

“This place is almost magical,” Currey said.

The place is so diverse that the Department of Natural Resources has to manage it simultaneously as a gameland farm, a wildlife forest, a coastal reserve and a cultural and historical keepsake.

“It’s breathtaking. It’s quintessential Edisto Island, sweeping beauty all along.

It’s the way the rest of the South Carolinacoast was 60 years ago, 70 years ago,” said Marian Brailsford, Edisto Island Open Land Trust director.

At the heart of this pearl are historical and cultural showpieces to be preserved, such as an intact icehouse and gardener’s shed, and the walls of a stable from the Bleak Hall plantation, as well as the ruins of the Sea Cloud plantation. They date to the Civil War era or before.

In a nook of backwoods on one of the trails, there’s a brick cylinder “beehive” seep well, built to act like a catch basin at the bottom of a small run that might once have been an artesian seep of groundwater. It was very likely built by slaves.

The focus of the plantation’s management will be “wildlife and the people who come to enjoy that ecosystem,” in the words of Natural Resources marine biologist Phil Maier. Management will be tight.

The historical structures are being fenced off. Staff live on the site, police will patrol it and a cadre of volunteers is already emerging to keep more eyes on it. Hunting will be permit-managed by game seasons, times and locations, a lot like it is with the Donnelley wildlife area farther south. Dogs must be leashed and are not allowed on the beach island or its causeway.

Botany Bay Plantation WMA open for public use ‘It’s quintessential Edisto Island, sweeping beauty all along.’

How to get there

From U.S. 17 South, take S.C. 174 to Edisto Island. Turn left at Botany Bay Road, 8.5 miles past the McKinley Washington Bridge and just past the Edisto Serpentarium. At the road’s end, turn in at the gate to the left. An information kiosk is on the right. The area is open dawn to dark, seven days a week. Seasonal hunts may affect access. For information, call 953-9300 during business hours or go to www.dnr.sc.gov.

Currents: science and conservation

Botany Bay Plantation WMA open for public use

‘It’s quintessential Edisto Island, sweeping beauty all along.’

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