The Freshwater Land Trust announced this week that it has closed on a conservation easement that will permanently protect 1,128 acres of sensitive land in Coosa County.

Current landowner Joe “Jody” Thrasher reached the agreement with Freshwater Land Trust to ensure that his land is permanently protected.

“The Coosa River Basin was one of the most biologically rich ecosystems on the planet,” Thrasher said in a news release. “Only fragments now remain.

“It is our duty to restore and preserve what remains, so that our grandchildren will be able to imagine what once was, and to be reminded that some things, once lost, can never be regained,” he said.

Conservation easements are legally binding agreements between landowners and a government or private land stewardship group like the Freshwater Land Trust to permanently protect ecologically sensitive land. The land can either be purchased (usually at below market rates) or donated to the organization that pledges to manage it going forward.

The land being preserved in this easement includes a 3.3-mile stretch of Hatchet Creek, a Coosa River tributary designated by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management as an “Outstanding Alabama Water,” meaning it has “exceptional recreational or ecological significance.”

Hatchet Creek is considered critical habitat to the threatened Tulotoma snail and nine species of freshwater mussels that are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The creek also has one of the largest known stands of Cahaba lilies in the area, and was once home to large stands of longleaf pine forests, an important ecosystem in Alabama that was drastically reduced by human activity and is home to numerous threatened and endangered species.

“Longleaf pine forests used to be an abundant habitat throughout the Southeast, but its range has been significantly reduced over the last century through fire suppression, silviculture, agriculture, and urbanization,” said Sam McCoy, land stewardship director for the Freshwater Land Trust. “Many federally and state-protected species need this habitat type, so restoration like this on the Thrasher property is important for wildlife conservation.”

Before Thrasher purchased the property, it had been used to grow loblolly pines for the timber industry. Since then, Thrasher has been working to restore the original montane longleaf pine savannah ecosystem by clearing out the competing loblolly pines through logging and the use of prescribed fire.

Longleaf pine forests are home to numerous threatened and endangered species, including the red-cockaded woodpecker, the eastern indigo snake and the gopher tortoise.

The 1,128-acre area is the largest acquisition in the Freshwater Land Trust’s history, and the group’s first purchase in Coosa County.

The Birmingham-based conservation group says it manages more than 8,000 acres of land across central Alabama, and has protected more than 11,000 acres since 1996.