Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge on Tennessee-Alabama line gaining momentum

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service authorized to acquire up to 25,000 acres in Franklin County

File photo/ Water pouring over rocks in Turkey Creek at the Walls of Jericho on the Tennessee-Alabama state line.
File photo/ Water pouring over rocks in Turkey Creek at the Walls of Jericho on the Tennessee-Alabama state line.

An effort to establish a national wildlife refuge along the Tennessee-Alabama line that takes in up to 25,000 acres of the southern Cumberland Plateau is gaining momentum.

The authorized but unestablished Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge could become one of more than 500 wildlife refuges in the U.S., according to federal officials, and only four new ones have opened in the last five years. The footprint of the refuge covers an estimated 25,120 acres in Franklin County, Tennessee.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the Biden Administration's America the Beautiful plan could give legs to the authorized but unfunded refuge that could stretch from the Cumberland Plateau in Franklin County to the Alabama state line.

"The Paint Rock River, just about everybody agrees, is an aquatic gem worthy of protection and conservation," wildlife service spokesperson Dan Chapman said Jan. 10 in a departmental article on the proposal.

Chapman said the possible boost from the plan comes as development continues to encroach on habitat, and a variety of federal, state and nonprofit agencies have kept working with nearby landowners over the last 25 years to return the Paint Rock River to its natural state.

The Paint Rock River's headwaters lie partly in Tennessee, where they flow toward the confluence of Estill Fork and Hurricane Creek in the hilly plateau terrain of northwest Jackson County, Alabama.

(READ MORE: Land Trust for Tennessee celebrates national award for its work in conservation of land)

The America the Beautiful plan, with the goal of conserving at least 30% of the nation's lands and waters by 2030, further fuels efforts to create the refuge, Chapman said.

"A Paint Rock River refuge was authorized, or approved, in 2013," Chapman said, "but it awaits its first plot of land before it's considered a real, or 'established,' refuge."

Emery Hoyle, refuge supervisor for the wildlife service's Area III, said it's still unknown how much help the refuge might get until more details are released about the America the Beautiful plan.

"The refuge has been approved by the agency, so we are authorized to go out and acquire lands in Tennessee to establish it," Hoyle said in a phone interview.

But federal funding for those purchases hasn't been committed.

"We would hope that there's some money in the America the Beautiful initiative for land acquisition," Hoyle said. "If there is, that is a potential source of funds for us to be able to move forward, but we're waiting on the Department [of the Interior] to roll out the details. We don't know how it's going to look when it gets rolled out and down to our level."

The idea of the refuge is to protect the headwaters first, so the benefits flow downstream, Hoyle said. He said any efforts toward creating a national wildlife refuge where the Paint Rock River flows through Alabama would be a future conversation.

The refuge lies within a 40,000-acre Conservation Partnership Area - an area defined by land held by conservation organizations and state agencies and private landowners where a joint effort can be undertaken. If the refuge is established, the wildlife service would be able to fully participate with other conservation partners in preservation efforts, according to the service's 240-page June 2015 Land Protection Plan and Final Environmental Assessment for the establishment of Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge. Cost estimates at the time stood at $36-$48 million, according to Chapman.

David Viker, the regional refuge chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Southeast, said in the article the proposed refuge will only become reality with public buy-in.

(READ MORE: Agreement protects more than 4,000 acres of Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau)

"It's as beautiful as any piece of land we currently have in the refuge system," Viker said. "It is one of the more significant, relatively pristine and relatively intact large tracts of land in the southern Appalachian Mountains that's not already in public ownership, like a national forest or a national park."

The America the Beautiful plan has goals of reducing damage inflicted on the environment by a warming planet by creating corridors of protected and connected lands so animals can move from one region to another.

"Paint Rock would be perfect for that," Viker said. "It's both a biodiversity hotspot and a large, relatively intact ecosystem that connects to the larger landscape. So, it's a site-specific jewel, as well as a key link in a conservation chain."

Already, federal officials have been at work making habitat repairs within the Paint Rock River watershed.

Restoration work

Substantial repairs were made to tributaries in the Paint Rock River's watershed in northern Jackson County, where erosion was damaging aquatic habitat. The flow was redirected with work to restore the stream bank at sites like Larkin Fork, one of the Paint Rock River's numerous tributaries.

"Increasingly heavy deluges of rainwater - a devastating hallmark of climate change in Alabama and Tennessee - had destroyed the stream bank and sent the Larkin up to the roadway," Chapman said. "Prime aquatic habitat for a slew of federally threatened or endangered species had possibly washed downstream."

Got land?

Franklin County, Tennessee, landowners interested in participating in establishing the Paint Rock River National Wildlife Refuge can contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Decatur, Alabama, at wheeler@fws.gov or call 256-350-6639.

The wildlife service - along with The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, Tennessee Valley Authority and Bates Bauer, the Alabama landowner involved - hired a contractor with an excavator to build a floodplain "bench" to slow the clear creek's flow, according to Chapman. Smaller rocks were placed in the Larkin's stream bed to slow the speed of the water and create aerated habitat for fish and mussels, he said.

"Meanwhile, the [wildlife] service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, various nonprofits and the states have undertaken 50 or so water quality projects across the watershed to help the species that make the region so unique," Chapman said.

(READ MORE: Objection filed to forest service Foothills Landscape Project in North Georgia mountains)

More than 90% of the region is forested - mostly with tall, second-growth hardwoods - and the area also contains the nation's highest concentration of caves, springs and sinkholes, he said.

"The awe-inspiring Walls of Jericho, where the Paint Rock cascades through 200-foot limestone walls and down through the gorge, sits along the Alabama-Tennessee line," Chapman said.

The unique Walls of Jericho are in a remote area of the refuge's footprint, accessible primarily from Alabama though the Walls of Jericho Natural Area lies in Tennessee.

Precious species at risk

According to the wildlife service, the Paint Rock and its tributaries in Tennessee and Alabama "are home to some of the most biologically significant resources in the United States," including more than 100 species of freshwater fish, such as the rare and endangered palezone shiner, and more than 50 species of freshwater mussels.

The pale lilliput and Alabama lampshell mussels are found nowhere else in the world, according to federal officials.

The region's caves are numerous and provide habitat for a number of endangered and threatened species, including gray bats, Indiana bats, Tennessee cave salamanders and the Alabama cave shrimp, officials said.

Forests involved are habitat for migratory birds, including the cerulean warbler, whose numbers have plummeted 70% over the past 50 years, and the surrounding landscape supports federally threatened plants, such as the American Hart's-tongue fern, Price's potato-bean, white fringeless orchid and the endangered Morefield's leather-flower, officials said.

What's next?

Getting the refuge established remains elusive.

Viker said years of bare-bones wildlife service budgets have stunted its ability to buy land and hire people to manage it. Opposition to federal ownership of land, too, sours some elected officials on new refuges, particularly in the South, according to officials.

(READ MORE: Environmental group launches $5.25 million fund to protect 30,000 acres in Chattanooga region)

"The current administration [in Washington] is supportive of priority-land acquisitions," Viker said, "but we're waiting on some base budget increases and some focused land-acquisition dollars, both of which look hopeful in the next year or two."

Even though land buying could be some time away, federal officials want to hear from Tennessee landowners who might be willing to participate if acquisition funding is released.

"We're only interested in acquiring land from willing sellers or from people willing to set up a conservation easement or by donations," Hoyle said.

Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.

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