GATEWAY - One of the state’s most biologically diverse areas has been permanently set aside for conservation and exploration.
Directors of several heritage and conservation agencies welcomed more than 100 people Friday morning to the official dedication of the Devil’s Eyebrow Natural Area, the 71st area acquired and set aside for preservation by the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission in its 40-year history.
Chris Colclasure, the commission’s director, summed up the excitement over the preserve at the conclusion of his welcoming remarks.
“This is the easiest purchase decision we’ve ever made,” Colclasure said.
The mission of the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission is to protect, study, inventory and track rare, threatened and endangered plants and animals within the state of Arkansas, said Jane Jones-Schulz, education and information coordinator for the commission.
The area is open to visitors free of charge. Hunting regulations for the area will be announced by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission in 2014. Overnight camping and off-road vehicles are not allowed.
The commission owns 1,375 acres of land as part of the natural area, which is located about a half-mile east of Gateway in Benton County and features limestone bluffs, glades and riparian forests.According to the commission’s website, the property includes 3 miles of undeveloped shoreline along Beaver Lake, as well as the headwaters of Indian Creek, which serves as a winter nesting area for bald eagles.
Jones-Schulz said the commission will vote on final approval to acquire an additional 351 acres in August. The Game and Fish Commission is also acquiring 220 acres adjacent to the site, for a total of 1,952 acres.
Colclasure said the acquisition process began in late 2010, when commission staff began making inventory trips to the area to see if it was worthy of inclusion in the state system of natural areas.
“We also house the state’s rare-species information, so we had historical records to consult,” Colclasure said. “We went back and looked through our records, and we discovered that botanists had been coming here since the ’20s and had identified all these different rare plants. Most of them are still here.”
Theo Witsell, a botanist with the commission, said that as of the last plant inventory in April, the area contains more than 600 documented plant species, 26 of which are considered rare. Six of the species, including the black maple tree, two wild grasses and a wild onion, are considered “globally rare,” and are of a higher conservation concern.
“The quality of the habitats here are really high,” Witsell said. “With the exception of a little bit of property up here on the ridge, a lot of the property is so rugged that it really hasn’t been disturbed much. It’s still very natural, with a high diversity of different species.”
The 1,375 acres that make up the natural area were originally purchased by the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit conservation organization based in Arlington, Va., with field offices in various states.The purchase was funded through the Wal-Mart Acres for America program, a $35 million program that funds the purchase of one acre for conservation for every acre of land developed by Wal-Mart.
The Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission then purchased the land from the Nature Conservancy for $2.2 million at $1,600 per acre, using state funds provided by Arkansas’ one-eighth percent conservation sales tax and the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council.
After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, botanists led two nature walks into the depths of the natural area-an hour-long hike and another 30-minute-long hike. Despite the unusually wintry weather conditions - May 3 is the latest date on record for snowfall in Arkansas - about a dozen people participated in each trek. Witsell, who led the hour-long walk, identified many examples of the wildlife found in the area, including chinquapin trees and pink glade onions.
Jones-Schulz said Devil’s Eyebrow derives its name from local lore, which holds that when railway surveyors were trying to plot routes through portions of the Ozarks in Benton County in the early 20th century, a homestead resident advised them that it would be easier to “lay a railroad across the devil’s eyebrow” than through the Ozark Mountains.
Jones-Schulz said Devil’s Eyebrow is second in plant diversity to only one other natural area in the state, the Miller County Sandhills, a 184-acre preserve in southwest Arkansas, though the title may not go uncontested for long.
“Once people like Theo [Witsell] start looking around Devil’s Eyebrow, there’s no telling what they’ll find,” Jones-Schulz said.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 05/04/2013