Source: Greenville News (September 1, 2022) – The mountains and foothills of northwestern South Carolina are a place of singular beauty and abundant natural resources, causing people to flock here for centuries. That growth has exploded exponentially in recent decades and, if left unchecked, it has the potential to destroy the very things that drew…
Source: Greenville Journal (January 13, 2022) – Hank Didier knows from experience the importance of protecting the environment. As an Orlando attorney who tried cases involving the Takata airbag failures and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Didier spent more than 20 years as a successful environmental and consumer product safety…
December 9, 2021 (Source: WSPA) — If you’re hoping to buy or sell a home in Greenville next year, you might want to start searching now. According to the latest housing forecast released by Realtor.com, the Greenville metro area is predicted to be the seventh “hottest” housing market out of all metro areas in the…
Source: Greenville Journal (May 28, 2021) Members of the Tanglewood Middle School Bike Club saved a fawn during their last meeting of the school year on Wednesday, May 26. Students found baby deer on a bridge on property donated by Ethos Project and Hank Didier, according to a social media post from Greenville County Schools. Maureen Phend,…
Last spring, I invited Dr. Patrick McMillan, Hilliard Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Clemson and Director of the SC Botanical Garden, to speak at one of Upstate Forever’s events. He urged us all to take a moment to be awed by our region’s natural wonders, and to appreciate how beautiful — and unusual — the…
Last week in Bartow I sat through an entire day of presentations by Florida farmers and ranchers looking to sell a conservation easement (essentially, the development rights) to the state through the Rural and Family Lands Program, one of the primary land conservation programs in our state. Speaker after speaker — several moved to tears…
Our environment plays an essential role in providing a high quality of life for our country, our communities and our children. That’s why protecting it is so important. There are countless ways everyone can contribute to this mission but in recent years, land conservation has been a distinctly valuable tool for preserving the health of…
Considered by many as a founding father of wildlife ecology and land preservation, Aldo Leopold believed “conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves in the public interest.” The conservation movement he helped inspire is now debating the appropriateness of those rewards when the land is owned by a real-estate partnership. I labor on the front lines of this debate as the head…