o the untrained eye, Three Sisters Swamp is an unlikely
candidate for a forest of huge ecological and scientific impor-tance.
The brown water is reminiscent of tea steeped too long,
and the trees are not especially tall nor surprisingly wide. In
fact, the water is among the purest in North Carolina, turned
brown not by runoff or other pollution but by naturally
decaying plant material. The state named the Black River an
“Outstanding Resource Water” in 1994. It’s the cypress trees,
gnarled with age, many hollowed by core rot, that make Three
Sisters truly incredible. There is no place like it in the world.
Four years after she was first introduced to Three Sisters,
Moore invited Dr. David Stahle of the University of Arkansas
to come visit. He was, at first, barely interested. Stahle is a
scientist, and he was looking not for bald cypress, but for post
oaks. As a dendrochronologist, he studies extremely old trees
to uncover what they can teach us about climate conditions
over long periods of time. Stahle was not especially excited
about seeing Moore’s cypress trees, but he came anyway. That
choice would, eventually, lead to the discovery of the oldest
cypress trees on earth. Over the course of the middle to late
1980s, Stahle and his team explored and researched in the
Three Sisters Swamp and determined that some trees there
were at least 1,200 years old. One tree, named Methuselah by
locals, dated to 364 AD.
In 1990, The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization
whose mission is “to conserve the lands and waters on which
all life depends,” began acquiring land for conservation along
the Black River. Nature Conservancy employees survey and
monitor areas under their management and provide educa-tional
resources for locals and visitors. They work closely with
the scientific community to identify ecologically significant
areas in need of protection and to conduct research in areas
already under conservation. Thanks to donations and conserva-tion
easements, the organization protects 19,000 acres of land
along the Black River, including the Three Sisters Swamp.
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WBM july 2019