Editorial: Ensure ACE Basin protections keep pace with a changing SC

The Post and Courier Pee Dee reports that The Poco Sabo Plantation property in Green Pond was one of the first protected sites in the ACE Basin.

The Poco Sabo Plantation property in Green Pond was one of the first protected sites in the ACE Basin.

The irony of South Carolina's effort to conserve the ACE Basin — the largely unspoiled coastal plain between the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers — is this: The more it's protected, the more protection it needs.

Decades of hard work by government, nonprofits and property owners to purchase large undeveloped parcels and place legal restrictions on those remaining in private hands have made more people aware of its natural beauty and ecological significance.

The ACE Basin's undeveloped state makes it increasingly rare along the southeastern coast, so of course more people want a piece of it.

That desire — combined with South Carolina's surging population and evolving economy — means protecting certain tracts in the ACE Basin also drives up demand and pressure on those parcels not already protected, some inside the ACE Basin's traditional boundaries of the 1.6-million-acre watershed and other land nearby.