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All-in-all some 15,000 acres came under protection from development last week, the latest chunk of 2,500 acres also fell in Dorchester County.

According to a press release:
The Lowcountry Open Land Trust (LOLT) said Thursday that it is protecting an additional 10 properties, totaling more than 2,500 acres, in the upper Edisto River Basin and Four Holes Swamp watershed. The properties include the donation to LOLT of a conservation easement on 154 acres from the Grooms- Hoover family of Berkeley County and the protection of 428 acres of mostly wetlands by restrictive covenants with the Army Corps of Engineers. These two properties alone, a complex of wetlands, uplands, bluffs, and ravines, fill nearly a square mile in the heart of Francis Beidler Forest, which is owned and operated by the National Audubon Society.

The announcement came the same day as the official dedication of a 12,488-acre conservation easement given by Norfolk Southern.