Should this secret forest be kept secret?

Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center considers letting in more visitors

By SAMMY FRETWELL

sfretwell@thestate.com

GEORGETOWN — Bob Joyner once saw a drunken raccoon stagger across South Island, woozy from eating over-ripened berries.

He’s watched an 83-year-old alligator thrash in a rice field more times than he can remember and seen a mother bobcat lope across a marsh dike with her cubs. Last week, he marveled at a rare wood stork gliding low across a rust-colored tidal flat.

It’s a natural world Joyner often sees alone. He manages the state-owned Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center, a 20,000-acre nature preserve with almost no public access.

Since acquiring the coastal land 30 years ago, the state wildlife department strictly has limited public visits.

People often wait a year to secure a spot on a weekly bus tour of the state wildlife sanctuary near Georgetown.

A warning sign at the Yawkey Center ferry tells people they will be prosecuted for visiting the state-owned island preserve without an appointment.

All told, fewer than 1,000 visitors a year are allowed on the land, a fraction of the number of visitors to nearby government preserves.

Some folks say the Yawkey Wildlife Center is an ecological treasure that more people should get a chance to visit.

While state wildlife officials plan one additional tour a week, starting next year, they say they’ll never open the center for widespread public use.

“You can’t just turn people loose,” Joyner said. “The thing that makes this area so special is that it is protected.”

Expanded public access would threaten the unspoiled coastal environment —- and it could cause the state to lose the property under terms of a wealthy New Englander’s will, wildlife officials say.

YAWKEY’S WILL

When he died in 1976, Boston Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey left millions of dollars in land and cash for philanthropic purposes.

Prominent among his gifts were three deserted islands south of Georgetown that he inherited from an uncle in the early 20th century: North Island, South Island and most of Cat Island.

The 20,000-acre islands have more than 12 miles of undeveloped beaches; maritime forests, thick with palmettos and live oaks; expansive marshes and tidal creeks; and the state’s oldest working lighthouse.

Thousands of ducks winter in the wetlands, which often prompted Yawkey to invite friends down for hunts. Among those who came were major-league baseball players Ty Cobb and Lefty Grove.

Today, the land south of Georgetown would be worth millions of dollars to developers if it had not been protected through Yawkey’s will. But Yawkey’s 1976 gift came with conditions to protect the islands from more than development.

His will said the islands should be a nature preserve for scientific and educational purposes. It banned hunting and “general recreational activities.”

Vast rice fields, where Yawkey shot ducks, were to be protected for waterfowl, which need areas of refuge to feed and escape hunting pressures in the surrounding area.

He left a $10 million endowment that includes money to manage the land. The annual budget for the preserve is about $500,000, all paid by the Yawkey Foundation, according to the state’s natural resources agency.

While restricting public access to the land, Yawkey’s will did not put a specific limit on the number of visitors allowed on the preserve.

As a result, the Department of Natural Resources has wrestled with how it can allow more public access and still comply with the will.

If the state violated the will, the land would revert to the Yawkey Foundation, which was set up to provide funds for the wildlife center. To increase access, the Yawkey Foundation has to agree, state officials say.

“It’s been controversial,” said John Frampton, the Natural Resource’s director.

For years, the will was interpreted to allow the once-a-week tour with 14 visitors. The foundation is receptive to the state’s plan to add one additional tour each week of 14 people.

Yawkey trustee Bill Gutfarb said he’s not interested in providing more tours than that.

“It is not meant for us, but for the animals, the vegetation, the waterfowl and the shorebirds,” said Gutfarb of Massachusetts.

Unlike state and national parks, which are set aside for public use and recreation, many government wildlife refuges focus on protecting endangered plants and animals. People who aren’t careful can disturb sensitive species, or in the case of waterfowl, scare away ducks.

‘IT COULD TOLERATE A LOT MORE USE’

Despite that, government wildlife refuges usually give the public ample access, and it doesn’t hurt the fragile landscape, said Tom Kohlsaat, a retired Department of Natural Resources official who formerly ran the agency’s non-game division. Free access extends to most of his former agency’s holdings as well as federal lands.

“It’s done all the time,” Kohlsaat said. “You can love any place to death, but I think if you asked most biologists in the department who knew anything about the area, they’d say it could tolerate a lot more use without affecting much of anything.”

Bull Island in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge is an example of how public access can co-exist with nature, he said.

Like the Yawkey Wildlife Center, Bull Island has extensive marshes that attract ducks and miles of unspoiled beaches. But a public ferry runs regularly to the federal wildlife sanctuary. People who get off the ferry have the freedom to roam the land at their own pace.

About 28,000 people visited the island last year, either by ferry or private boat, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Craig Sasser, a Wildlife Service biologist, said the agency sometimes restricts access to the island during parts of the year to protect migrating birds or other animals. But Bull Island generally is accessible.

“Public support for what we’re doing on these properties is extremely important,” Sasser said.

Tom Mertens, a winter resident of Myrtle Beach, said he’s been on several Yawkey Center tours and was impressed. Mertens learned about the weekly bus trips — which the state does not advertise — from a friend in Surfside Beach.

“The amount of birds on the property is just amazing,” Mertens said. “The guy that does the tours, Mr. Joyner, does a great job and is so entertaining. I think it would be very good for more people to see that kind of place. I’d like to see them open it up to more people.”

SECRET WORLD

Joyner, who has lived and worked on the Yawkey preserve for most of three decades, remains leery of expanding public access to the land.

On a recent drive through the property, he pointed at an array of features that make the Wildlife Center special.

Those included 12-foot long alligators, 200-year-old live oak trees, crystal clear tidal creeks, a 1920s-era chapel and thousands of wading birds.

The ruins of an old plantation graveyard lay on the edge of a marsh bank, palmetto trees and thick vegetation growing amid tstones headstones. In the evenings, the sunsets over the unspoiled marsh are stunning, Joyner said.

“You always hear about the beautiful sunsets out west, but I think they’re far more attractive here,” he said.

Joyner said scientists have found some of the oldest alligators in the United States at the Wildlife Center, including an 83-year-old behemoth called “Grover.” He was named for former president Grover Cleveland, who hunted the area in the 1890s.

Scientists know Grover is at least 83 because alligators often reach 12 feet in the first 30 years of their lives, Joyner said. Grover was documented at 12 feet long 53 years ago, Joyner said.

Joyner, who lives in a plantation house the Yawkey family built on South Island, said his wife and a state Natural Resources technician even have seen long-tailed cats the size of Labrador retrievers on the island. He said he’s been unable to confirm if they are panthers, believed to be extinct in South Carolina.

As Joyner’s truck maneuvered down a dusty road, it spooked a mother deer and her fawn, which leapt into a thicket. Later, a raccoon skittered along a rice field dike and into the woods.

Lining the dirt road were sugar hackberry trees, which produce fruit so sweet raccoons can’t resist them. But the ripened fruit can have an intoxicating effect on raccoons, he said.

“You’ll see them wobbling down the road and stumbling,” Joyner said.

Joyner’s drive also took him to a deserted beach on South Island with eight-foot-high dunes and a quiet forest of rare longleaf pines on Cat Island.

In the forest, Joyner could hear only the sound of the wind and the calling of birds. Cavities bored in longleafs showed evidence of the rare red-cockaded woodpecker.

It’s part of the special world of the Yawkey refuge, which Joyner said can’t tolerate much human disturbance.

“If I could see some way this area could be made more accessible without damaging the ecology, I’d be all for it,” he said. “But I understand why it is the way it is.”

Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537.