LTLT's Land Stewardship Program
Conserving land is much more than simply removing the threat of inappropriate development. Long-term stewardship is required to maintain the natural integrity of the land or to help restore it to such condition. LTLT promotes active stewardship of land, both for restoration and maintenance of ecosystem integrity and for providing the goods and services desired by landowners and society.

LTLT works to restore the landscape through the demonstration of sustainable forestry, agriculture, and wildlife habitat management practices on lands it owns. LTLT also works to promote these practices with other private landowners, including those with whom LTLT has conservation easement agreements.

Preserving the Little Tennessee Floodplains as Open Space
A major focus of LTLT’s conservation work is on the floodplains of the Little Tennessee River. The major flooding caused by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004 was a stark reminder of why we need to preserve these rich bottomlands as open space. In addition to floodplain protection, LTLT is active in the restoration and stewardship of floodplains, including stabilization of eroding streambanks, establishment of forested buffers adjacent to rivers and streams, restoration of wetland habitats, and control of invasive exotic plants.

Farming as a Landscape Maintenance Strategy along the Little Tennessee
Farming communities have been found along the Little Tennessee for at least four thousand years (according to pollen records in the bottomlands of Cowee). Eighteenth- century visitors to this land of the Cherokee, traveling from the Georgia headwaters to the great center of Cowee, wrote of large river-cane brakes interspersed with fields of corn and squash and peach orchards. The Little Tennessee River valley remains the most ecologically intact landscape in the southern Blue Ridge today, and farming can continue to coexist with clean water and rare species.

Maintaining open bottomland with good farming practices is one goal of LTLT - we are particularly proud to have brought hay management back to portions of our riverland acquisitions. There is no erosion on a well-maintained hayfield and, at different stages of growth, hayfields provide useful bird habitat.

While we seek to restore wetland habitats and establish forested buffers immediately adjacent to river and stream corridors, agricultural management is a cost-effective way to maintain the floodplain lands that we strive to protect from conversion to asphalt and “chemlawns”. Farming contributes to the extraordinarily beautiful mosaic of the Little Tennessee landscape and is essential to maintaining the rural economy and communities that make up the social fabric of our valley.