Last weekend Prof. Butler attended a luncheon and lecture held at Nemours Plantation, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a ground breaking conservation initiative to preserve and protect cultural landscapes and wildlife in the Ashley, Combahee, and Edisto River region of Beaufort and Colleton Counties, better known as the ACE Basin. In the 1980s, several non profits, public entities, and private owners partnered to protect the Lowcountry’s marshlands and historic sites from development using conservation easements and other means. Through their efforts, over 200,000 acres are protected today. The former rice plantations and other sites comprising the ACE Basin are a refuge for migrating birds and other wildlife, and have several layers of important cultural history, not unlike Hobcaw Barony a hundred miles to the north that Prof. Stiefel, Ward, and Muldrow are working to document.