Hands Across The Marsh

One of the Lowcountry's defining characteristics is its network of marshes, rising and falling in synchrony with the tides. In an encouraging example of cooperative governance, three disparate entities have come together to protect these critical environmental buffer zones from encroaching development.

Forming the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative (SASMI) are South Carolina's Department of Natural Resources, the non-profit Coastal Conservation League and the U.S. Defense Department, along with a host of local land trusts and 75 concerned individual citizen supporters. Funding for the initiative comes from a network of local, state and federal sources along with additional support from the already-existing Lowcountry Sentinel Landscape program. SASMI is modeled on the Longleaf Restoration Initiative, a public/private partnership established in 2005 to protect longleaf pine forests in the Southeast.

Bulkheads like these prevent marshes from migrating shoreward with rising seas

Three years in the making, SASMI is intended to protect and restore tidal marshes while conserving the naturally formed and shifting channels that allow marshes to adapt to rising sea levels. Other threats to healthy marshes are polluted runoff from ill-conceived waste treatment systems and ecologically unsustainable developments located too close to marshes. SASMI's partners plan on using strategies ranging from elevated roadways, retrofitting barriers to allow marshes to shift with sea levels and acquiring land along marshes for conservation. An important first step is already underway, mapping marsh migration patterns to provide accurate data to local marsh conservation efforts.

Birds like these clapper rails rely on marshes to raise their young

SASMI draws on the expertise of a diverse coalition of partners from North Carolina to the east-central Florida coast. More than 300 military and governmental authorities, conservation groups like the CCL, scientists, community leaders and fishermen are involved in the initiative. The Conservation League, for example, is partnering with the state's DNR to create a "Living Shorelines" training course for contractors, providing guidance in designing and building properties that preserve the ability of marshes to absorb rising tidal flows and provide critical habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife. "Our marshes are the lifeblood of our ecosystem," says the Conservation League's executive director Faith Rivers James, "and we must protect it so those who come after us can experience it in the way we have been blessed."

Invasion Alert?

Agriculturalists throughout South Carolina are on the lookout for an invader poised to breach the state's borders: the Spotted Lantern Fly (Lycoma delicatula). This tiny but destructive insect was first detected in Pennsylvania a decade ago, probably having arrived with hardscaping materials imported from Asia by one of that state's landscaping businesses. A voracious eater of leaves and bark, the lantern fly is now widespread on the eastern seaboard, including all of New England and south to Virginia, and has recently been found in North Carolina. It poses such a threat to vineyards, fruit orchards and cash crops that "if you see it, squash it" campaigns are common throughout the eastern United States.

Lantern fly eggs hatch in the spring

The lantern fly has not yet been detected in South Carolina, but Clemson's Department of Plant Industry expects it's only a matter of time before the insect will have an effect on South Carolina's peach fields and the state's fledgling viticulture efforts. It's especially worrisome at this time of year, when larva begin hatching. By mid-summer, they've reached the adult stage when their destructive foraging becomes most noticeable. The sap the insects excrete while dining on the bark of fruit trees, grape vines and hardwoods like walnut, birch and maple causes a black mold to form on leaves, inhibiting photosynthesis and attracting bees and wasps with its high sugar content.

The lantern fly isn't actually a fly, but a plant hopper favoring as a host another invasive species, the tree-of-heaven (Ailanthus altissima), widespread especially in the South. One method to control lantern fly populations is to destroy any such trees near planted fields. A variety of insecticides can prove temporarily effective, and some farmers have fought back with yet another non-native insect, the Praying Mantis, which feeds on lantern flies.

Although South Carolina remains free so far of the bugs, Clemson and the state's agriculture department urge residents to be on the lookout and report any sightings. You can find more information here about the insects and how to report them.

The Other Independence Day

This month marks the third national observance of Juneteenth, celebrated on the 19th to mark the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by Union troops to enslaved Americans on June 19th, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. Although Lincoln's Proclamation had officially taken effect two years earlier, the end of slavery came at different times in different parts of the Confederacy as the War Between The States wound down.

It wasn't until Union General Gordon Granger and his troops reached Galveston, at the farthest reaches of the former Confederacy, that Gordon announced "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free."

Texas later became the first state to officially declare the day a state holiday, in 1935; by the civil rights era, all fifty states had some kind of observance of the day. But it didn't become a federal holiday until 2021, when President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, making the day what many began to label as the country's second Independence Day.

The IAAM on Gadsden's Wharf

Juneteenth is particularly resonant for the Lowcountry and for Charleston, where an estimated 100,000 enslaved captives were herded from slave ships at Gadsden's Wharf. The wharf was built in 1760 by merchant and landowner Christopher Gadsden, who used enslaved labor for his vast rice plantations despite being a member of the Continental Congress and its dedication to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" which, to men of those times, did not apply to Blacks. Despite a Congressional ban on the slave trade which took effect in January of 1808, human beings continued to be bartered and sold at Gadsden's Wharf for another fifty years.

Today, the Wharf is the site of the soon-to-open International African American Museum, while a variety of Juneteenth celebrations mark the holiday all over the Charleston area, ranging from readings of the Emancipation Proclamation and the singing of traditional spirituals to music, dancing and outdoor dining. Check out Lowcountry Juneteenth Week.