(Delaware Wild Lands, Development & Marketing – Frankford DE)
Delaware Wild Lands (DWL) is pleased to announce their newest land acquisition: a donation of 160 acres of land in Sussex County from the family of Nancy Smoot. This parcel will be permanently protected, expanding DWL’s conservation of the Great Cypress Swamp.
Delaware Wild Lands owns and actively manages 10,600 contiguous acres of what remains of the Great Cypress Swamp – the Delmarva Peninsula’s largest forest and largest freshwater wetland. Reminiscent of the Deep South, and one of the nation’s northernmost cypress swamps, the Great Cypress Swamp once covered nearly 60,000 acres.
The Smoot property consists of 160 acres of forest immediately adjacent to land already owned by DWL. This new parcel will be incorporated into DWL’s large-scale habitat restoration work and will build on the Smoot family’s careful stewardship of these important forest resources. DWL is grateful to Everett Moore, of Moore & Rutt, for his exceptional legal service, and to Dan Sander, the property manager and local real estate agent, for their help ensuring the permanent protection of this beautiful property
DWL’s forward-looking approach to forest management earns rigorous certification from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and since 2011, DWL has planted 194,000 native trees in the Great Cypress Swamp. As a result of decades of care from DWL, the wildlife and wetlands of the Great Cypress Swamp are resurging and improving. What used to be intermittent sightings of river otter, waterfowl, amphibians, migratory birds, and eagles are now common occurrences in the Swamp. Waters filtered by the Swamp support two major watersheds: the Delaware Inland Bays to the east and the Chesapeake Bay to the west.