Large tract on Ohio River preserved
ROME, Ohio — Ralph Gaffin grew up hunting arrowheads, wild turkey and squirrels on a tract of land in southern Ohio.
Later, with a wife and son of his own, his family caught and released catfish at the property’s edge on the Ohio River.
Even while he works on a boat carrying coal, limestone and other dry cargo up and down the river, Gaffin keeps an eye on the nearly 1,000acre swath of forested bluffs.
“I feel connected to it,” the 52-year-old said. “We settled early. It goes way back. We’re talking about 200 years of family ownership.”
This past fall, after decades of discussions, the Gaffin family and another longtime family, the Lockharts, sold their land to the Nature Conservancy.
“You hate to let something like that go, but on the other hand … now other people will be able to enjoy it,” Gaffin said. “It was a hard decision to make, but I think it was the right one.”
The sale marks the Nature Conservancy’s largest purchase ever in Ohio and brings its Edge of Appalachia Preserve system — the state’ s largest privately owned nature preserve — up to 19,418 acres.
The Nature Conservancy’s plan is to eventually create an unbroken corridor for wildlife in southern Ohio that stretches from the original preserve in West Union to the Shawnee State Forest, about 20 miles to the east near Portsmouth.
But since most of the land in the area is privately owned by families, the Conservancy has had to stitch together small parcels over time.
Rich McCarty, an Adams County native and the Edge of Appalachia’s naturalist, knocks on doors and tries to persuade families to consider selling their land.
And for years, he and others at the Conservancy had been swinging for the Gaffin-Lockhart property. The parcel’s size alone is remarkable. According to the Conservancy, most of Ohio’s forestland is found on parcels smaller than 50 acres.
“That’s a piece we’ve been after for about 30 years. There aren’t any other 1,000-acre pieces that are going to be available,” McCarty said. “We’re getting there, to how big this preserve needs to be functional and viable — and this tract is critical to that.”
The swath of land, since named Smoky Hollow Preserve, fills in ecological gaps for the preserve.
The tract of unbroken forest and bluffs lies in a confluence of “eco-regions,” where various layers of rock give way to different types of soils, each with their own special suite of plants, insects, flora and fauna.
It contains much of the drainage of Smoky Run, an Ohio River tributary. And it hosts a number of rare, endangered and recovering species, including green salamanders, Allegheny woodrats and bobcats.
“We continue to find things that are unexpected and unusual here,” McCarty said.
Wild places in Ohio such as the Edge of Appalachia face a number of threats: invasive species, habitat fragmentation, logging and the potential rollback of rules restricting oil and gas development on public lands.
“That’s happening at the state level, the local level and the federal level,” said Nathan Johnson, public lands director for the Ohio Environmental Council. “It’s a very interesting time right now.”
This month alone, the Ohio legislature took a step toward bringing fracking to state parks, conservation groups sued two federal agencies over plans to permit fracking in Ohio’s only national forest and President Donald Trump called for a review of protections for federal lands.
But nature preserves — private and public — can guarantee protection for wilderness.
“They’re pretty well-insulated from political whims,” Johnson said. “They afford the public the opportunity to explore nature as it is when left alone.”
Gaffin said the long-term shelter that a preservation status affords property factored into the final decision to sell to the Nature Conservancy.
“It’s of great value to have tracts of land basically untouched, to have places preserved and not disturbed,” he said. “It’s important that we have spaces like that.”
Within a year or two, the Smoky Hollow addition will be snaked with a few trails leading to a 555-foot-high overlook of the Ohio River, opening up the view to the public for the first time in more than a century.
“It had been in the family for so long, it was just an emotional thing to let it go after those many years,” said Mary Gaffin, 81. “By selling to the Nature Conservancy, we feel that it will not be destroyed.”
Bill Twarogowski, 86, used to collect insects while hiking the property to bring back to Cincinnati where he taught high school biology. His wife, Marion, was a Lockhart and grew up on a farm there. She passed away just before the deal was finished.
Bill said Marion worried that her family’s property would someday be splintered, developed or turned into a dump site.
“We felt that this was a place that should be preserved,” Twarogowski said. “There’s this beauty here and this area here has so much to offer.
“We have all this. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s not let it get away from us.”
lane restrictions and night detours for interchange improvement. Completion: fall
lane restrictions for widening and improvement project. Completion: fall
lane restrictions for widening. Completion: summer
lane restrictions for road improvements. Completion: early June lane restrictions for intersection improvement. Completion: summer
reduced to southbound-only traffic for road reconstruction and improvements. Completion: summer
lane restrictions for road improvements. Completion: spring reduced to southbound-only traffic for roadway improvements. Completion: spring 2018
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various restrictions for widening, railroad bridge replacement and patching. Completion: late 2017 southbound-only traffic for roadway widening. Completion: November lane restrictions in place for widening and improvements. Completion: fall 2018
reconstruction and widening with lane restrictions, variable speed limit restrictions and weekend and evening ramp closures. Completion: fall 2018
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