South Mountain Partnership Celebrates 10 Years

In 2006, a small group of people met at Kings Gap Environmental Education Center in Cumberland County to talk about how to protect the White Rocks property along the ridge of South Mountain from development.

That meeting planted the seeds for the South Mountain Conservation Landscape and a partnership of citizens, businesses, nonprofits, academic institutions, and government that recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

In 2011, the 850-acre White Rocks property was protected. Other notable accomplishments of the South Mountain Partnership are:

-- Three “Go Local for Health” summits that focused on affordable recreation and food opportunities;

-- A grant that supported the South Mountain Fruit Belt Economic Impact study;

-- Completion of a Cultural Landscape Assessment and Plan for Michaux State Forest (Cumberland, Franklin, Adams counties);

-- Receipt of a Chesapeake Bay Funders Collaborative Grant to increase the collective and individual grassroots capacity to accomplish regional goals; and

-- A Speakers Series that, for seven years, has worked to educate and inform citizens about conservation challenges past and present.

For more information, visit the South Mountain Partnership website.

(Reprinted from DCNR’s February 8 Resource newsletter.  Click Here to sign up for your own copy.)