Turner leaves conservation legacy in S.C.

MORNING HEADLINES | Ted Turner, the iconoclastic Atlanta media mogul who founded CNN, had a big conservation impact on South Carolina. He died Wednesday at age 87.

Not only did he purchase and conserve thousands of acres of South Carolina land, but his role as an early adopter for conservation helped convince others to protect the state’s special places, according to people who knew him.

“We are so grateful and so indebted to his conservation legacy,” Chris Crowley, owner of Coastal Expeditions tours and who also serves as Awendaw’s mayor, told The Post and Courier.

Crowley’s company routinely ferries visitors to St. Phillips Island, which Turner bought in 1979. At 4,680 acres in Beaufort County, it was the state’s largest-held private island until Turner sold it to the state at less than market rate in 2017.

Turner, who was one of the nation’s largest landowners with 2 million acres in holdings, helped set a standard for conservation by placing his first South Carolina property, 4,200-acre Hope Plantation in Colleton County, in a conservation easement in 1988.

At the time, the agreement to restrict development was a pretty new tool, but soon became a vital strategy for conservationists who eventually established the wildly-successful ACE River Basin. It is at the confluence of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers south of Charleston where more than 300,000 acres is protected today.

Turner also paid $2.9 million for Kinloch Plantation, a 5,800-acre hunting preserve near Georgetown, in 1982. It now is protected permanently through an easement with Ducks Unlimited.

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