Alva Review-Courier -

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — The state's newest nature preserve is a hilly 338-acre refuge a few miles from the Kentucky River, much of it wooded, with a beautiful creek running through it and the potential to restore endangered plants and rare mussels.

The Drennon Creek State Nature Preserve in Henry County is the first new preserve added to the state system in a decade.

The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves (OKNP) took title to the land in early 2020.

"It was just really an extraordinary property," said Zeb Weese, executive director of the agency.

Mary Margaret Lowe and Eugene Lacefield, both former employees at the University of Kentucky, bought the land as a getaway in 1978.

They built a solar home and trails, eradicated invasive plants and practiced good forest management.

Ultimately, they realized they wanted to do something with the land to benefit others far into the future, which led to donating nearly all their 350 acres to OKNP.

The designation as a nature preserve carries the highest level of legal protection for the land.

"We're interested in preserving the habitat," said Lowe, who also worked many years at Georgetown College.

The land they donated was valued at just over $1 million.

Lowe and Lacefield said they hope their donation encourages other people to think about ways they can help protect the environment.

"We were amazed . . . that two people could offer and provide a state nature preserve for all of Kentucky and surrounding peoples to come visit," Lacefield was quoted in OKNP's annual report.

'ONE OF THE BEST EXAMPLES'

It's not uncommon for the state to add land to existing nature preserves, but it doesn't often create a new preserve, for a number of reasons.

Owners must be willing to sell or donate the land because OKNP only acquires land from willing participants, and the state has to have the money to buy property and to manage it. It also helps to have larger tracts of land because that creates more potential for conservation work.

In addition, the land has to have particular attributes to qualify for protection as a nature preserve. Those include the best remaining examples of rare species populations or some of the best scenery in the state.

"For us to really acquire something as a state nature preserve, it has to be one of the best examples of that ecological community, of that habitat type, have federally endangered species" or species listed in Kentucky as endangered or threatened, Weese said.

One thing that qualified the preserve in Henry County was the potential to restore a federally endangered species called Braun's rockcress, which is rare globally.

It has been found only in Franklin, Henry and Owen counties in Kentucky, often on the steep slopes along the Kentucky River, and in two Tennessee counties.

The Drennon Creek preserve is near the northernmost spot where the flower has been found.

FUTURE SPOT FOR HIKING AND BIRD-WATCHING

The first priority for the preserve is to plant Braun's rockcress to try to develop a sustainable population, according to OKNP's annual report.

There also is potential at the site to restore another endangered plant called the Kentucky bladderpod, and to restore rare species of mussels, Weese said.

Once restoration of Braun's rockcress has reached an acceptable point, the state will consider opening the preserve to hiking and other low-impact activities, such as bird-watching.

OKNP provides hiking and other activities on conservation lands it manages, but its main mission is to protect land recognized for its natural significance, including rare species.

Of 372 plant species in the state designated as endangered, threatened or of special concern, for instance, 206 are conserved in OKNP's nature preserves or natural areas, according to the report.

In addition to nature preserves, OKNP uses other programs to conserve land and protect the environment and rare species, including conservation easements and partnerships with federal, state and local governments, non-profit agencies and private landowners.

The agency also manages the state's wild rivers program.

The agency added 2,700 acres to protected status in Fiscal Year 2020, which was between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020.

At the start of the current 2021 fiscal year, there was a total of 143,435 acres under protection through various OKNP programs, including more than 40 state nature preserves. That amounted to less than 0.6 percent of the land in Kentucky.

The agency is about halfway to the goal of conserving some property in each of Kentucky's 120 counties, Weese said.

FINDING ENDANGERED SPECIES

It's not unusual for botanists and ecologists with OKNP to find new populations of species listed as endangered or threatened as they carry out the constant work-in-progress of locating, assessing and protecting rare species and significant natural areas.

In the 2020 fiscal year, for instance, the agency found dozens of new populations of plants. Perhaps the most notable was the discovery of a population of the four angled rose gentian in Pulaski County, according to the annual report.

The plant had never been recorded west of the Appalachian Mountains.

It's a challenge to keep ahead of impacts such as development and a changing climate, but there are successes.

One example: Survey work in the most recent fiscal year showed that the state's population of a plant called running buffalo is stable enough to remove it from the list of endangered species, according to the OKNP report.

"I'm sure that we're falling behind on some species and we're making progress on others," Weese said of the effort to preserve species in Kentucky.

The Office of Kentucky Nature Preserves began working with the state Transportation Cabinet in the 2020 fiscal year to look for rare plants and grasslands, and habitat for pollinators such as bees and butterflies, on the rights-of-way along state roads.

Botanists did surveys along 7,000 miles of roads in 23 counties in fiscal 2020 and found more than 20 spots that could provide top habitat for pollinating insects, and many had rare plants, according to the OKNP report.

The agency plans to survey all state roads over five years.

'THEY'RE PART OF WHO WE ARE'

Funding for conservation work has gone down from some sources in recent years, but it was good news for OKNP that the one-year budget approved by the legislature in the 2020 session did not take money from the Kentucky Land Heritage Conservation Fund to use for other purposes.

It was the first budget since 2014 that didn't sweep money from the fund.

The land conservation fund gets money from a number of sources, including the state's portion of a tax on unmined coal, environmental fines, interest income, donations and the sale of nature license plates.

However, revenue from the unmined minerals tax has dropped sharply because of a reduction in the assessed value of coal, so OKNP received nothing from that source in Fiscal Year 2020.

Revenue from nature license plates also has gone down, from $678,117 in 2010 to $361,460 in 2020, mostly because the state has approved more specialty plates, creating other causes for people to support.

Weese said buying a nature license plate is a simple way for Kentucky residents to help support land conservation, habitat management and eco-tourism.

People often ask why it's important to preserve a particular plant or insect. The answer is that all of them are part of what makes Kentucky unique, Weese said.

"They're part of who we are," Weese said. "When we lose these places, not only do we lose these areas, we lose part of our history. It is protecting what makes Kentucky, Kentucky."