Sumter Farm & Stock Company: A Private-Lands Model for Prairie & Savanna Restoration in the Alabama Black Belt

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The Black Belt Prairie Ecoregion can be seen from space stretching almost 350 miles from southwest Tennessee in a crescent south and east across Alabama, reaching only about 35 miles wide at its widest point. About 200 years ago, this region was home to one of the largest grasslands in the South, encompassing more than one million acres of open prairies, chalky barrens, canebrakes, and sparsely treed oak and oak-pine savannas. These grassland ecosystems were maintained by a combination of fire, grazing, and the challenges to tree growth presented by dense clay shrink-swell soils. These grassland types graded into open, grassy oak-hickory woodlands and rich forests on bottomlands, slopes, and bluffs.

As Mississippi and Alabama became states in 1817 and 1819, respectively, and the Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek Indians were pushed out, the Black Belt was destined to change forever. The name Black Belt is a double entendre but the different meanings are inextricably linked. On the one hand, the region is named for its dark black, calcareous and fertile topsoil that was perfect for growing cotton. Unfortunately, its second meeting is derived from the fact that the region was home to the largest concentration of African-American slaves in the 19th century and the dash to cultivate as much of that fertile plowable ground as possible in the slave-driven cotton economy, led to the rapid elimination and degradation of most of the prairies in just a few decades after settlement.

With little knowledge of sound farming practices such as crop rotation and cover crop usage, repeated cultivation led to precious topsoil eroding away, exposing the off-white clay, marl, and chalk subsoil. Worn-out fields and pastures were “improved” with non-native grasses that now cloak the landscape. Abandoned fields not used for pasture or crops succeeded into cedar thickets and later became cedar-hardwood forests. Likewise, savannas and open grassy woodlands became dense, closed-canopy forests without fire. Loss of bison and elk, followed by two centuries of erosion, misuse, overgrazing, and fire suppression has resulted in the loss of 99 percent of the region’s original grasslands and the open woodlands becoming dense and crowded.

The remaining 1 percent

The remaining one percent clings to life in the 21st century mostly in powerline corridors and along roadsides. Unfortunately, the single Tennessee remnant discovered in the 1950s is limited to a couple of dozen prairie species on a few square meters of rural roadside banks and in effect the Black Belt ecosystem is extinct in Tennessee. Alabama and Mississippi are and have always been the most important states for the Black Belt. In Alabama, Al Schotz and Michael Barbour of the Alabama Natural Heritage Program, based at Auburn University, have mapped and inventoried the remaining patches of Black Belt prairie and presented their findings in a 2009 report. In their multi-year study, they determined how much prairie exists, the quality of remaining prairie acreage, where the greatest clusters of prairie are located, and how rare birds, reptiles, and mammals utilize those prairies. They mapped 15,509 acres of prairie remaining across the Alabama Black Belt and identified Sumter County, Alabama as containing the most remaining prairie, with 1,330 acres. They also noted that 15 percent (88,000 acres) of Sumter County had “prairie soils.” In total, they identified 10 significant clusters of prairie in Alabama, including a large cluster in southeast Sumter County. Unfortunately, such intensive mapping and prioritization does not yet exist for the Mississippi Black Belt. Within that state, important remnants are the 105-acre Osborn Prairie (also known as 16th Section Prairie) in Oktibbeha County and the 100-acre Pulliam Prairie in Chickasaw County. The U.S. Forest Service also is actively restoring a several hundred acre tract in north Mississippi.

None of the large remnants found today offers the kind of grand scenes once described by William Bartram in 1775 in present-day Montgomery, Alabama. Artist Philip Juras captured Bartram’s words and re-created what these prairies looked like as they extended to the horizon across the rolling plains of south Alabama. The Black Belt was not like the Great Plains. Across the larger landscape, the Black Belt was not a single large open prairie but rather was “a dense archipelago of prairie ‘islands’ imbedded in a matrix of woodland and forest (Barone 2005). The prairies proper, which were “largely treeless, though surrounded by forest and often with small woodlands within them, usually on hilltops or ridges,” only covered about 345,000 acres (Barone 2005). However, Perkins (in Wright 1882) wrote that in 1825 the Saunders family of McNairy County, Tennessee, found “A virgin soil of great fertility, landscapes of marvelous beauty made up of green savannas...” The “treed” portion of Black Belt, the savannas and open, grassy woodlands, likely pushed the total grassland acreage over one million acres.

America’s Amazon

Part of what made the Black Belt so beautiful and biologically diverse is the fact that the landscape was a mosaic. Always close by to the prairie were savannas, woodlands, forests, wetlands, and streams, which combined to make the Coastal Plain of Alabama one of the richest sites on Earth. In 2015, this region of Alabama was included in the designation of the world’s newest global biodiversity hotspot—Southeastern U.S. Coastal Plain Hotspot—by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund—a designation that came following a publication led by Dr. Reed Noss, author of Forgotten Grasslands of the South and current Chief Science Advisor for SGI.

A recent article by journalist and film producer Ben Raines in the LA Times likened much of Alabama to “America’s Amazon.” Raines paid homage to the wealth of natural streams and wetlands (especially bottomland forested wetlands) found in Alabama and was quoted in an NPR interview stating, “There are more species of fish, turtles, snails, salamanders, crawfish and mussels here than any other river system in America." Raines points out the need to raise awareness about Alabama’s tremendous natural assets. He notes that it is critical to protect the “hot zone…where aquatic creatures and land creatures…interact." He adds, that "If we don't protect it, if we build on top of it, and live on top of it, or destroy it through logging, what have you, we lose that."

We agree those edges are important to protect, and they extend far upriver from the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. In rivers like the Alabama, Black Warrior, Coosa, Sipsey, Tallapoosa, and Tombigbee, and numerous others, the pollutants trickle in to the streams from adjacent cotton fields, pasture run-off, chemical spills, urban sources, and pollution from factories such as the Tyson Chicken Factory which recently polluted the Locust Fork of the Warrior River. But, what Raines didn’t cover is that it isn’t just about protecting these upstream regions from “logging”—so much of what needs to happen is restoring ecosystems along rivers like the Noxubee to what they were like historically, which included prairies and savannas, in addition to the often heralded forests and wetlands. Failure to recognize the millions of acres of Alabama that were once grassland is yet another reason why Reed Noss appropriately termed them the “Forgotten grasslands of the South.” They are still being forgotten as a key components in American conservation, even though famous Alabamian, Dr. E.O. Wilson of Harvard University, says that these Southern grasslands “should be a priority goal in America’s environmental movement.”

Photos of the some of the best remaining Black Belt Prairie remnants. Old Cahawba Prairie, Dallas Co., Alabama (left), Osborn Prairie, Oktibbeha Co., Mississippi (middle), and Pulliam Prairie, Chickasaw Co., Mississippi (right).

While Southern grasslands were much smaller than those in the Midwest, what they lack in size they make up for in biodiversity. In the 1980s, Dr. Sidney McDaniel at Mississippi State University (MSU), and students, studied Osborn Prairie, located largely within the right-of-way of a Tennessee Valley Authority powerline corridor. They found that this little prairie patch is home to many rare species found almost nowhere else in the region. It was particularly rich in western species that are found primarily west of the Mississippi River such as Yellow Plume (Neptunia lutea), Prairie Pleatleaf (Nemastylis geminiflora), and Great Plains Ladies Tresses Orchid (Spiranthes magnicamporum).

Later, staff at MSU’s Mississippi Entomological Museum began to study the insect diversity at Osborn, discovering unusually diverse assemblages of moths, bees, ants, and grasshoppers. They discovered a new species of moth, Neodactria oktibbeha, known only from that one prairie and from a single prairie in Minnesota more than 1,000 miles away, and nowhere else on Earth. A follow-up study found 90 species of bees at Osborn Prairie, in less than 100 acres. Incredibly, the Black Belt is home to about 1,000 species of moths.

Meanwhile other notable discoveries continued to be made at Old Cahawba Prairie in Dallas County, Alabama. In 2001, botanist Jim Allison named a new species of a sunflower relative, Sticky Rosinweed (Silphium perplexum). This 6-7 ft tall plant is known only from a couple of prairies in Dallas and Perry counties. About ten years ago, Pulliam Prairie was discovered north of Starkville yielded new species of Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia terranigrae). In 2013, Dr. Brian Keener, University of West Alabama, and Zach Irick and Dwayne Estes (both with Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, based at Austin Peay State University) discovered a new species of leatherflower (Clematis) known only from “prairie woods” in the Black Belt near Demopolis and Livingston. These discoveries reveal how unique each remnant prairie is. For example, some of the important species found at Old Cahawba are not at Osborn and vice versa. Therefore, study of each large remaining remnant has a decent chance of leading to significant discoveries, sometimes of totally new species unknown to science.

The Black Belt has been so heavily modified that it is rare to find sizable tracts of prairies that are off the radar of the conservation community. But that’s exactly what happened in fall 2020 when the owners of the 11,000-acre Sumter Farm & Stock Co. contacted the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative. Mitchell Bell mentioned that he and his family wanted to know if SGI had an interest in coming down to see the property. We at SGI get such requests all the time and we love interacting with private landowners. But so many times we are disappointed when upon our visit we find that what the landowners thought was something special, is often ecologically highly disturbed and not special at all.

Given the losses that the Black Belt region has sustained, and the fact that the few large prairies in existence seemingly were already known, it didn’t seem likely upon first consideration that there would be much of significance. But, Mitchell shared photographs of species he found on the farm which showed rare species that grow only in high-quality grassland habitats. We realized with just those couple of photographs that the farm had excellent potential. Upon studying aerial maps ahead of our visit, we could see patches of prairie and we grew excited about the possibilities of what the farm could potentially hold. When we consulted Schotz and Barbour’s (2009) report it showed a couple of prairie patches adjacent to but not on the property that were designated as low quality. Still we were intrigued to visit and see it for ourselves and make firsthand observations.

“Whoa! Look at this this!!!”

On October 26-27, 2020, we [Dwayne Estes and Theo Witsell (SGI), JoVonn Hill (MSU), Brian Keener (UWA)] visited the farm with the family and were impressed by what we found. During the course of the two day visit, we observed a rare deep-soiled tallgrass prairie remnant, hundreds of acres of pine-oak savannas and woodlands, incredible flatwoods, rich forested bluffs, and one of the prettiest rivers in the Coastal Plain, the Noxubee, one of those precious upper tributaries of “America’s Amazon.” Even though it was late in the season, we found significant and unexpected finds such as the rare Earleaf False Foxglove (Agalinis auriculata), not previously known from Sumter County and only known from a handful of sites in all of Alabama.

We created the Biodiversity of Sumter Farm and Stock Co., Alabama project on iNaturalist to track our finds. Over two days, the seven of us recorded our observations in the project. To date, we have documented 370 observations of 264 species. Based on the size of the farm and diversity of habitats (grasslands, savannas, forests, woodlands, wetlands, agricultural) we believe the property probably supports 500-600 plant species, perhaps more. Thanks to management and restoration by the family over the past half-century, we were encouraged by the variety and size of high-quality habitats and we think there is high likelihood of more rare plant and animal species tracked by the Alabama Natural Heritage Program and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Due to the late date and short duration of our survey we knew that further study would be needed to document the biodiversity and habitats of the farm.

The nexus between culture & conservation

While Alabama has a long history of under-prioritizing conservation, it has a rich cultural history, some much celebrated and some representing dark periods of the past. In Raines’s interview, he mentions that the last slave ship that brought “enslaved Africans to America was found" by Raines himself in the Mobile-Tensaw river system. There is a poignant connection that becomes clearer when we stop and consider the nexus between the natural history and cultural history of Alabama that is often untold. The nexus between these two histories is also deeply connected to present conservation issues such as water quality. Much of the water quality issues facing the Mobile-Tensaw watershed arise from agricultural pollution of interior rivers. What is one of the greatest agricultural centers in all of the eastern U.S.? It is the Black Belt, home to one of the largest centers of cotton production in the 19th century. This cotton was worked by slaves who had been brought into South Alabama via the same waterway, many would come to toil in the hot fields of the Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi. They couldn’t help it, but in their forced labor, the prairies vanished, topsoil vanished, species vanished, and what came after was a greatly depleted human and ecological aftermath.

Too many times in the 100+ year history of Southern conservation have well-intending individuals like Raines mistakenly left out any mention of grasslands. In heralding the impending loss of America’s Amazon—the Mobile Tensaw River System, Raines and others have apparently forgotten to mention that we have already lost 99 percent of a former “grassland Amazon”—the Black Belt, the Longleaf Pine Savannas, the Coosa Prairies, the Cumberland Plateau Shortleaf Pine-Oak Savannas, all of which formed the majority of the headwaters regions for these rivers. But now, as we worry about the new and fast-growing “dead zone” off the coast of Mobile, it is time we build one step further on Raines’s ideas. It is true we must think about where the land meets the water, but importantly we must prioritize, as E.O. Wilson suggests, the grasslands, which for the past 200 years have been utterly abused and neglected, while forests, forested wetlands, streams, and coastal environments have gotten the majority of conservation focus and funding. Private properties such as Sumter Farm & Cattle Company can play important roles in reshaping how we look at conservation in Alabama and conserve our precious remaining natural resources.

One of the most significant properties in the black belt

Before leaving the farm, we sat down with the family and expressed how inspired we were by the excellent conservation work that they had accomplished all by themselves. In our professional opinions, the property has immensely significant natural resources, ranking it among the top known sites in the Black Belt and due to its size, quality, and restoration potential, we at SGI would ranks it one of the most significant “prairie properties” in the South.

We discussed with the family their needs and wishes for the farm. They expressed a desire to continue to use about one-third of the farm for cattle grazing and hay production, one-third for timber production, and one-third for recreation (hunting, wildlife viewing, hiking). The family expressed interest in how they can build capacity on their existing conservation practices to enhance the use of more prescribed fire, invasive species treatment, selective timber harvests, and improvement of cattle grazing and haying lands to restore prairie and savanna habitats.

Funding for habitat management is often tied to the presence of rare species, especially rare birds, bats, mussels, fish, salamanders, reptiles, and crayfish. Presence of rare animals is tied to high-quality habitat, which is in turn determined by plant species that form natural communities and provide cover, food, and nectar, or what we at SGI like to call “groceries on the ground.” Given that we observed hundreds of acres of high-quality habitat with numerous highly conservative and rare species of plants, it makes sense that there is excellent potential habitat for additional rare species to be discovered. But in order to determine this, a thorough study of the farm’s biodiversity is needed along with identifying and mapping the various habitat types. This will help landowners visualize the landscape and prioritize future conservation efforts. Such a baseline study will be essential to the development of a restoration, management, and conservation plan to help inform short- and long-term conservation needs. This multi-faceted plan will help ensure that the farm’s natural resources remain intact through future generations.

Such an investment will also help identify conservation funding opportunities from private, federal, and state grants such as the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. Finally, this investment will allow the Farm to hold a special place as regional conservation efforts in the Black Belt continue to build and involve education and outreach, community engagement, regional conservation planning and collaboration, green economic opportunities, ecotourism, and market-driven conservation strategies.

We appreciate the family’s consideration of this proposal from SGI and our partners. We welcome the opportunity to work together to tell “An Untold Story of American History & Conservation.” SGI is on a mission to “Chart a New Course for Conservation in the 21st Century” by elevating grasslands conservation as a “priority goal in America’s [and Alabama's] environmental movement.”

objectives

For restoration to succeed in an effective and cost-efficient manner it is imperative to understand what resources are present on the farm in order to determine what needs to be enhanced, restored, reduced, or eradicated. SGI partnered with locally-based experts at UWA and MSU in developing this collaborative proposal. Collaboration is key and we are excited about potentially working side-by-side with other conservation organizations in the state and region such as USDA NRCS, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alabama Natural Heritage Program, and Alabama Audubon.

Our proposed work will consist of three components:

1. Describe and map habitat types

2. Document biodiversity

3. Develop a restoration, management, and conservation plan

We will bring our expertise and abilities to read the clues of the land to map habitat types—the different kind of prairies, savannas, woodlands, forests, and wetlands—using the experience we’ve developed for other large properties, including the 900-acre farm of Senator Bill & Tracy Frist in Roanoke, Virginia, the 800-acre Stones River Bend Park in Nashville, Tennessee, and the 5,000-acre Coal Creek Farm in Crossville, Tennessee. Prior to creating SGI we also mapped the habitats across 25,000-acres associated with the 15-mile-long Ocoee River Gorge east of Chattanooga for the U.S. Forest Service and Tennessee Department of Transportation. Mapping the 11,000-acres at Sumter Farm & Stock Co. is a foundational step toward developing a short- and long-range conservation vision for the farm. This portion of the work would be led by SGI’s Chief Ecologist, Theo Witsell.

Our team includes some of the top experts in biodiversity exploration in the Southeast. In particular, SGI would rely on its new partnerships with the University of West Alabama (UWA) and Mississippi State University’s Mississippi Entomological Museum (MEM) to represent SGI with local expertise. Dr. Brian Keener and a UWA graduate student will lead the floristic study. Dr. Keener is recognized as the leading botanist in the Alabama-Mississippi region and is Curator of the Herbarium at UWA and the Alabama Plant Atlas, which is the primary source of information on the 4,233 known vascular plant species of Alabama. Dr. JoVonn Hill and his team at MEM are the recognized leaders in the study of insect biodiversity in the region. He serves as interim director of MEM and curates the 3rd largest insect collection in the Southeast. Specimens of plants and insects will be collected and deposited in the regional museums at UWA (plants), MEM (insects), and at SGI headquarters at APSU (plants).

In addition to collecting physical specimens that will be permanently housed in regional museums and valuable for future scientific study, we will also document the species we find by uploading photos of them into the new “Biodiversity of Sumter Farm and Stock Company, Alabama” project on iNaturalist. SGI currently manages more than 70 iNaturalist projects across the Southeast. The beauty of iNaturalist is that it can serve as a great way for the farm owners and visitors to get in on the fun, to learn species, and to contribute to the biodiversity documentation aspect of this project.

We will search for populations of rare species of plants and animals. During our two day survey we found multiple rare plant species, some of which are shown in the gallery below. These are all prairie species and many are rare or declining nationwide. In the maps below, counties in yellow indicate that the species is rare in that state, whereas orange counties indicate species that are considered to have been extirpated from that state.

The discovery of rare animals on the farm could aid in securing federal conservation dollars. During our two day survey, we observed suitable habitat for many additional rare species. Continued study could help to determine if these species are present. For example, in prairies and prairie woods we will search for such as the Small White Ladies Slipper Orchid (Cypripedium candidum) and Prairie Mole Cricket (Gryllotalpa major). In the mature loblolly pine savannas we will search for Red-Cockaded Woodpecker (Dryobates borealis). In hardwood forests and woodlands suitable habitat may exist for Indiana Bat (Myotis sodialis) or Northern Long-eared Bat (Myosotis septentrionalis) and other tree-roosting bats. On wooded bluffs suitable habitat for Price’s Potato Bean (Apios priceana) should be present. In the Noxubee River, several aquatic species could occur, including a number of mussels, Orangenacre Mucket (Lampsilis perovalis), Inflated Heelsplitter (Potamilus inflatus), Flat Pigtoe (Pleurobema marshalli), Heavy Pigtoe (Pleurobema taitianum), Ovate Clubshell (Pleurobema perovatum), Southern Clubshell (Pleurobema decisum), and Southern Combshell (Epioblasma penita).

Ecological management and restoration can be tricky but having a thorough map of habitats and species survey are integral to conservation efforts. How often should a landowner burn and at what time of year? How many trees should be removed and which ones? Should seeds be brought in or is there an existing seed source on site such as a hidden seed bank or rootstock bank? Can cattle be used to help manage or restore grasslands effectively, and if so how?  What invasive species are most problematic and are in need of eradication. Which ecosystems are we trying to restore and which should be prioritized?