An aerial view of 8,500 acres to be purchased and transferred to Francis Marion University as an "outdoor classroom" for its new forestry program. (Photo courtesy of Pee Dee Land Trust staff)
Students who choose to study forestry at Francis Marion University could soon have access to an 8,500-acre “outdoor classroom” to learn hands-on about forest management.
It’s part of a larger effort, which Gov. Henry McMaster has championed since 2021, to purchase large swaths of undeveloped property across the state in an effort to preserve the land and reduce the impacts of flooding when natural disasters strike the state.
The 4,200-student college, located in Florence, could play a part in that endeavor, taking on the stewardship of one of those massive tracts in the Pee Dee, known as Duck Ponds.
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The state’s Office of Resilience, which operates the program, plans to use $20 million in federal environmental grant funding to purchase the property on the school’s behalf. Francis Marion will cover the costs of maintaining it.
Legislators on a spending review panel gave the proposal its initial approval this week. It still needs a final nod from a five-member fiscal review committee chaired by the governor.
If approved, the partnership with Francis Marion would mark a first for the Office of Resilience. Past land purchases have been taken over by the state’s natural resources and parks agencies, not a college.
It would also make the college the second-largest public university landholder in the state — second only to Clemson University.
“It’s a first for them. It’s a first for us,” said Francis Marion President Luther “Fred” Carter. “But it shouldn’t be the last.”
Not only will the land, which stretches for 8 miles along the Great Pee Dee River, soak up runoff water and reduce flooding, it will be a space for higher learning and research, Carter told the South Carolina Daily Gazette.
And the timing was perfect as the school’s forestry program will welcome its first group of 30 to 40 students in August, Carter said.
Francis Marion’s recently approved program is the second forestry program implemented by a four-year state college. The other is at Clemson.
“There is an enormous amount of forested land in the Pee Dee and Lowcountry,” he said. “It’s a long way from here to Clemson. Now we have the opportunity to train our own foresters.”
A new $18 million building dedicated to the forestry and environmental sciences programs is under construction on the campus and is expected to be complete in the spring of 2027.
The Francis Marion program will work hand-in-hand with an associate’s degree program offered at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, allowing those students to transfer their credits into a bachelor’s degree.
But starting a forestry program also requires a massive amount of space for growing a variety of trees at different stages of maturity, Carter said.
Donors had offered other pieces of property but those tracts were in Marlboro and Dillon counties or across the state line in North Carolina.
By comparison, the lower half of the Duck Ponds property is a 10-minute drive from campus and stretches northwest to another Francis Marion building — the Freshwater Ecology Center.
According to Carter, most of the property was timberland previously owned by Hartsville-headquartered Sonoco Products Company. When Sonoco divested the property, previously used to grow the timber it needed to produce paper products, the real estate arm of John Hancock Life Insurance Company purchased it.
The property hit the market again.
And in 2025, a coalition that included the Open Space Institute, the foundation run by Lake City businesswoman and philanthropist Darla Moore, and Florence County government chipped in to buy it until the state could come up with the funds to take it over.
The funding for the purchase comes from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Climate Pollution Reduction Grant. South Carolina and the Office of Resilience were part of a four-state partnership awarded the $421.2 million grant, along with The Nature Conservancy.
The Office of Resilience’s share was $50 million. The Francis Marion deal marks the first project funded with the grant money.
In addition to combating flooding, other environmental benefits include the reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses absorbed by the trees and other vegetation Francis Marion students will plant and maintain.
The school, through its development foundation, has been setting aside funds for the past four years to cover its program costs. Donors also have contributed $1.5 million for forestry student scholarships.
Carter said Francis Marion also plans to open up parts of the property for public use, creating as many as five access points to the river for fishing and kayaking.
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
