<p>Conservationists dedicated the state's newest Wildlife Management Area on Wednesday, as a result of a partnership that will mean additional protection for the Broxton Rocks, a south Georgia sandstone rock outcropping with deep crevasses and waterfalls that provides a home for hundreds of plant and animal species, some of them endangered.</p><p>"We're preserving a crown jewel in Georgia's ecological treasures," said Noel Holcomb, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, at a remote boat dock on a slough along the Ocmulgee River about 20 miles north of Douglas.</p><p>As he and others spoke during a 45-minute dedication ceremony beneath a canopy of moss-draped trees, an alligator swam lazily across the slough and fish leaped out of the brownish water.</p><p>The new 3,597-acre Flat Tub Wildlife Management Area, one of about 95 operated by DNR to provide outdoor recreation for Georgians, was the latest addition to the 33,000-acre Broxton Rocks Conservation Area, which includes the Broxton Rocks Preserve, managed by the Georgia Forestry Commission, the Nature Conservancy and Coffee County.</p><p>Frankie Snow, the Broxton Rocks' naturalist, said the area was created by shifts in the earth's tectonic plates and thousands of years of erosion. Rock Creek, a tributary of the Ocmulgee, flows through the rocks.</p><p>"It is a refuge for plants that don't normally grow in south Georgia," he said. "There are plants from north Georgia and lichens from the far North. There are plants from the tropics."</p><p>One of the plants, a Caribbean flower known as the rock rose, is believed to have been brought to the rocks by a migrating bird that feeds on insects that eat the seeds, he said.</p><p>The new management area resulted from a partnership between DNR, the Georgia Forestry Commission, the Nature Conservancy, Plum Creek Timber Co., the nation's largest landowner, and local officials. DNR received a $1.5 million federal forestry grant to purchase the land. The Nature Conservancy provided another $450,000 and state bonds, another $520,000.</p><p>The project will mean preservation of wetland areas and calls for the creation of a working forest with longleaf pines, the types of trees that used to cover the South from Texas to Virginia.</p><p>"The project is a huge success," said Tavia McCuen, director of the Nature Conservancy in Georgia. "We've got to continue to look at these private-public partnerships to make great things happen."</p><p>"When forests are professionally managed, they contribute greatly to our quality of life, which this property will do for decades," said Ken Stewart, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission.</p>
