The Patroon Mitigation Bank is 479 acres of bottomland hardwood forest and wetland habitat in Sabine County, home to several endangered species and vital aquatic ecosystems. Adjacent to the Sabine National Forest, Patroon had been unsustainably logged throughout the 20th century. Now, with a conservation easement held by TLC and the management of the landowners, this property will be protected in perpetuity from future damage and will be actively restored to its former glory as a biologically diverse riparian hardwood forest.
The property was acquired by Champion Paper and Fiber Company in the late 1930s/early 1940s. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Champion logged the native longleaf pine forest heavily and repopulated it with a monoculture of loblolly pines, a common practice for paper companies at the time. By 1979, over 90% of the floodplain habitat within the easement area had been reduced to bare soil, and all but the very least-accessible areas (steep banks and other areas unreachable by machinery) were set to be planted with loblolly. Due to some inconsistent and unsophisticated planting techniques, the land had to be prepared and replanted three times, and it was not until 1995 that aerial photography of the area shows mature loblolly stands. As a result, very little riparian habitat was preserved along the Patroon Bayou waterway. The land was in bad shape and not ecologically diverse.
Loblolly harvests began again in earnest in 1995 and continued until 2004, at which point Champion was purchased by International Paper Company (IP). IP began selling off tracts of Patroon Bottom in order to pay off some of its debts and the whole area was in danger of devastating fragmentation. A company called Mitigation Management, LLC purchased the 1,925 acre tract that includes the easement area now held by TLC with the intention of doing traditional timber management. Fortunately for us, MML instead elected to pursue conservation-oriented land management and to turn the site into a mitigation bank, which will ensure that the land will be restored to a healthy, ecologically diverse riparian hardwood forest in the future.
TLC became interested in the property because of its importance in the South Central Plains Ecoregion. The tract adjoins the Sabine National Forest, has several known nearby colonies of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker and is within the floodplain of Patroon Bayou, a tributary of the Sabine River which flows into the Toledo Bend Reservoir. With these strong conservation values and active land management and ecological restoration projects already in the works, the Patroon Mitigation Bank is an exciting new project that provides a unique opportunity to protect land and to increase diversity.
