Center for Humans and Nature

CHN—South Carolina Continues Work on The ACE Basin: Common Ground

Regional Cultures of Conservation, ACE Basin History Documentary: Taking the Show on the Road

December 16th, 2009

As summer gave way to fall in the South Carolina Lowcountry, CHN in South Carolina took advantage of mild days and the mellow light of autumn to continue filming the flora and fauna of the ACE Basin and to garner additional interviews with state conservationists and private landowners. William Bailey, Senior Program Associate and executive producer, traveled with a veteran three-man film crew from the University of South Carolina’s media center documenting the beauty of a healthy ecosystem and the work of the people whose love of the land has maintained this health.

October’s multi-day visit was devoted to on-site interviews with people whose protected lands are somewhat smaller than the parcels of thousands of acres found in the ACE. However, these landowners’ devotion to the river basin is in no way tempered by the size of their holdings. A member of one family chose to identify himself as a “representative of the little man in the ACE,” as he and his wife, in lengthy separate interviews, detailed their acquisition of their property and the years of work they had put into caring for the land. Another husband and wife spoke of the joy of rearing their large family in close proximity to nature and of the satisfaction in finding their ecological values reflected by their children and grandchildren.  And two generations of still another family—this one living outside the ACE’s core area—had chosen to maintain their land under easement although their family farm and timber business is enclosed by a gated community.

November featured further interviews, most notably rich and evocative conversations with Vivian Donnelley and Laura Donnelley, the wife and sister respectively of the late Strachan Donnelley, CHN’s founder. Both women spoke about Dr. Donnelley’s affinity for the natural world and his commitment to bioethics and ecological health, and they talked in great detail of the role of Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley whose philanthropy and love of the Lowcountry was instrumental in establishing the ACE Basin Project. Also in November, Bailey and the production crew attended the grand celebration of the ACE Basin Project’s twentieth anniversary at Willtown Bluff on the banks of the Edisto River. Here, even a deluge of biblical proportions could not dampen the enthusiasm of scores of people whose work and generosity had underwritten the ACE’s success.

Two single-day visits took place in December: one was spent shooting aerial footage of the ACE Basin; the other involved shooting additional landscapes and wildlife, scenes that are essential to illustrating the topics discussed in the interviews.