Sandhills constitute a distinctive geological feature in southeastern Georgia and the Carolinas. In some places, they are ancient beaches from retreating sea levels. More often they are the creation of winds that transported vast amounts of soil during a long dry period. Lighter organic content was carried further, leaving behind rolling hills of sand deposited on rock formations and firm soil.
When Europeans came to the New World, they saw little value in the sandhills, although Native Americans had often lived on them at locations adjacent to streams and soil suitable for their crops. However, the sandhills themselves were not suitable for growing the foods of Native Americans or those imported from Europe.
In the mid-20th century, plant scientists from the USDA agricultural experiment station in Tifton developed hybrid versions of Bermuda grass suited to the soils and climate of south Georgia. Soon, thousands of acres of sandhills were transformed into pastures for cattle grazing and hay. I heard a farmer say, “I always thought that sandhill land was there just to hold the world together, but now I see that it is good for something.”
This grass needed a lot of nitrogen fertilizer to flourish, but given ample rain or irrigation, it produced abundant forage.
Unfortunately, raising cattle for market as a farming enterprise has diminished radically in this part of the country, as have other agricultural endeavors. Whatever economic benefits sandhill pastures once provided have faded accordingly.
The next question is, “What has been lost with the conversion of original sandhills to pastures?” Perhaps surprisingly to some, the answer is “A lot!” The sandhills always did more to hold the world together than fill vacant space. They were -- and still are where they remain intact -- a dynamic part of earth’s ecological maintenance system.
The uncultivated, undisturbed sandhills were home to a wide variety of plants and animals, some relatively rare. Plants include small oaks, saw palmetto, cactus, flowering shrubs. Spring-fed creeks and smaller streams supported other hardwoods, pines and berries.
The broad leaves of the saw palmettos captured rain and dew to support the plant and living creatures from insects to gopher tortoises. Like broad leaf plants elsewhere, the palmettos and oaks capture carbon and produce oxygen, critical functions for life on this planet. The sandy soil itself is an effective filter for various contaminants, keeping them out of rivers and eventually oceans.
Sandhills are home to many “critters” and help to feed others that come for nourishment. Quail and squirrels that live there year-round share acorns with ducks that fly in during the day and leave for roosts on water at night. Every plant offers some sort of seed or fruit or serves as food itself to sustain animals or insects, some of which are prey along the food chain to other species.
One of the most interesting denizens of the sandhills is the gopher tortoise, a specialized land-living cousin of turtles for which water is home. The gopher part of the name comes from the fact that they dig burrows as underground shelters and nests.
They sometimes share their “gopher holes” with other creatures, including rattlesnakes and the endangered indigo snakes. Tortoises have an arched carapace, which is nearly impenetrable, but there is no evidence of conflict between them and rattlesnakes anyway. During the Great Depression, some people dug out gopher holes to capture tortoises for food, which does not seem to be inviting, but deep hunger leaves scant room for picky taste buds.
What are the impacts of transformation of original sandhills to pastures? First is loss of basic ecological function. Grass does not capture carbon or produce oxygen as effectively as do the broad-leafed palmettos and oaks. Nitrogen fertilizer necessary for pasture grass adds a burden to the filtration process of sand. Whatever is deposited on it percolates quickly into streams and promotes algae growth.
Sandhill pasture is more an ecological desert than its undeveloped predecessor. There is little variety in plant life. Mowers and fertilizer spreaders wipe out everything but grass. An errant gopher tortoise would be smashed or chopped, but there is no food for sandhill creatures anyway.
Some, like the indigo snake, are imperiled, in part because they need tortoise burrows for safety. And, gopher tortoises have become endangered by habitat loss. I know of a small number that were evicted by a landfill and rescued to St. Catherine’s Island by a skilled conservationist.
Humans are slow to learn that converting natural places to make money is often wrong-headed. A proposal to use an Ohoopee River sandhill site for a hog growing and finishing operation met strong scientifically-based opposition and failed just before a hurricane blew apart similar facilities in North Carolina, contaminating land and rivers for hundreds of square miles.
About 50 years ago, a proposed off-shore mining operation along the Georgia coast narrowly was defeated by pointing to its costs to coastal fisheries and tourism. There is a current drive by an Alabama company to mine titanium dioxide at the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, opposed by many, including scientists, who say that it will destroy the basin of the swamp. Like the old sandhills, once it is destroyed, it cannot be restored.
Roger G. Branch Sr. is professor emeritus of sociology at Georgia Southern University and is a retired pastor.