Conservation Easements in the ACE Basin, Colleton County

A conservation model built on landowners, not government purchase

Since the ACE Basin Project's founding action in the late 1980s -- protecting roughly 9,200 acres in the middle of Colleton County -- the broader ACE Basin Task Force partnership (South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and private landowners) has protected more than 300,000 acres in and around the basin. What sets the ACE Basin apart from most large US conservation landscapes is the split between how that land got protected: of the more than 200,000 acres in the core project, only about 79,000 acres are public land held by an agency (the Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, the SCDNR-managed ACE Basin National Estuarine Research Reserve, Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, and Donnelley Wildlife Management Area). The rest -- the majority of the protected footprint -- is privately owned land where the landowner has voluntarily donated a conservation easement, well over 140 of them recorded to date.

That's an active, ongoing pattern, not a closed chapter of history. Lowcountry Land Trust, the regional land trust most active in the ACE Basin, continues to record new easements here: a 561-acre easement on the Cooler family's Hiott Station tract, partly funded through the South Carolina Conservation Bank, and a separate 314-acre addition along the Ashepoo River that brought a contiguous protected corridor there to roughly 14,340 acres, are both recent examples. If you're looking at a large rural tract anywhere in Colleton's ACE Basin area -- forested uplands, blackwater river frontage, or tidal-marsh-adjacent land -- there's a real, non-trivial chance either that the parcel already carries a recorded easement, or that a similar neighboring tract does, shaping what's realistically buildable nearby.

How these easements actually work, and why a donor does it

A conservation easement in the ACE Basin context is typically a perpetual, voluntary restriction that a landowner grants to a qualified holder -- usually Lowcountry Land Trust, sometimes paired with a state or federal conservation partner -- giving up specified development rights (subdivision, clearing beyond agreed limits, new structures beyond a defined footprint) while retaining ownership, use, and often continued agriculture, forestry, or hunting on the land. The easement is recorded against the property's title and runs with the land forever, regardless of who owns it afterward -- it isn't a lease, a permit, or anything that expires. Landowners donate these easements for a mix of reasons: a genuine conservation commitment to keeping the basin's forests and marshes intact, a federal charitable-deduction tax benefit for a donated easement's appraised value, and in some cases matching grant funding through the South Carolina Conservation Bank that can offset the value given up, as in the Hiott Station example.

For a prospective buyer, the practical question isn't whether easements exist in the abstract -- they clearly do, at scale -- it's whether the specific parcel you're considering already has one recorded against it, and if so, exactly what it restricts. Easement terms are not standardized: one may protect only a narrow river-corridor buffer while allowing a house site and normal agricultural use elsewhere on the tract; another may restrict the entire parcel to open space with no new construction at all. The only reliable way to know is a title search plus a direct records check at the Colleton County Register of Deeds, cross-referenced with Lowcountry Land Trust if a recorded easement names them as holder -- a listing description, a real estate agent's summary, or the absence of an easement mentioned in a listing is not sufficient confirmation either way.

An easement layers on top of zoning -- it does not replace it

A recorded conservation easement is a separate legal instrument from Colleton County's zoning code (Title 14, Chapter 14.08) described on our county hub page. A parcel can be subject to both a private conservation easement restricting development and the county's ordinary zoning district requirements at the same time, and satisfying one does not exempt a landowner from the other. That layering matters more than usual in Colleton right now: the county's November 2025 zoning amendment adding data centers as a special-exception use in rural districts -- including parts of the ACE Basin and its headwaters -- and the resulting landowner lawsuit (see the county hub for details) played out in the same rural landscape where a large share of the private land is already easement-protected. As of July 7, 2026, the county has adopted a six-month moratorium (Ordinance 26-O-04) on new data-center land-use approvals while it revises its comprehensive plan and zoning rules, and the lawsuit is paused for that period -- so the underlying fight is currently on hold, not resolved. An easement recorded against a specific parcel doesn't automatically block a large-scale project on a neighboring, unencumbered tract, but it does mean the easement-protected parcel itself stays off the table for that kind of development regardless of how the broader zoning fight eventually resolves.

What this means for your purchase

If you're buying land in Colleton County's ACE Basin footprint, ask directly and early whether a conservation easement is already recorded against the specific parcel -- not just whether the general area is 'in the ACE Basin,' since a great deal of surrounding land is unprotected private property, and being near protected land is not the same as being subject to an easement yourself. If one exists, get the actual recorded easement document, not a summary, since terms vary widely from a narrow buffer to a full development ban. If you're a current landowner considering donating an easement, Lowcountry Land Trust and the South Carolina Conservation Bank are the two organizations most directly involved in structuring and, in some cases, partially funding ACE Basin easements -- contact them directly for current program terms rather than assuming the Hiott Station or Ashepoo River examples above reflect a fixed, standard deal. Either way, remember an easement is permanent and separate from, not a substitute for, Colleton County's own zoning -- confirm both independently for any specific parcel.