Audubon Center's manager is retiring after 34 years
The Silver Bluff Audubon Center & Sanctuary has flourished, quite literally, under Dan Connelly.
Acres and acres of what used to be privately owned farm land is now 3,154 acres of actively managed pine forest, hardwood bottom lands, fields, lakes and streams, a lot of which can be directly attributed to Connelly.
After 34 years as the center's manager, Connelly is retiring.
He began working at Silver Bluff Audubon in September 1975 after a Clemson University classmate contacted him about the position. He taught school for one year after graduating from Clemson with a master's degree in wildlife biology (the second person to do so in the school's history) then took a job in North Carolina.
But he longed to return south. He is a native of Hampton County having grown up on his family farm.
"I figured the job (at the Silver Bluff Audubon) would be a chance for me to get south, close to home. I told my wife, 'I may regret taking it, but I won't regret not taking it,'" Connelly said.
The National Audubon Society took control of the property in the mid-1970s from the Starr family of Philadelphia, a Winter Colony family. In 2002, Silver Bluff became an Audubon center.
Connelly grew up hunting and fishing and along the way, fostered an appreciation for nature and nurturing the land.
He believes what separated him from other candidates for the job at Silver Bluff Audubon is that he had a grasp of something more than pure academics.
And that's what he has passed along to Silver Bluff visitors over the years, particularly school children.
Silver Bluff hosts education programming throughout the year like the Science Technology Enrichment Program (STEP) that takes kids out ofthe classroom so they can experience nature up close and personal.
"It was a big shock to me that students have no grasp of nature," Connelly said. "It is very different seeing it in person and getting to touch it."
Over the years, Connelly has learned every nook and cranny of Silver Bluff Audubon from planting loblolly and longleaf pine trees and by ensuring the property is actively managed in a number of ways to keep the land sustainable and attractive to the animals that make it home.
The center has a checklist of more than 200 species of birds.
There is an annual timber sale of longleaf pines for mulch, prescribed burns and 1,900 acres for deer and feral hog management.
"It would just be a jungle if it wasn't actively managed," Connelly said. "I hope the land will be protected and will still be a managed forest after I leave. I hope it remains as green space and that the property is more and more appreciated by the general public."
Not only does Connelly have a passion for the center's continued land management and preservation, but he also has a passion for the area's history.
"He can take you anywhere on that property and tell you a story," said center director Paul Koehler. "It's kind of neat to imagine what life was like back then."
Connelly can tell the stories of when Silver Bluff was the site of an Indian trading post established by George Galphin in the early 1740s. At the time of the American Revolutionary War, Fort Galphin was built consisting of a stockaded brick building.
Lt. Col. Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee marched on Fort Galphin on May 21, 1781, and took the fort with its store of supplies needed by the American forces to take Augusta from the British.
"There is a historical legacy on this land that is unbelievable," Connelly said. "The first African-American church congregation in America was organized right here under Galphin."
He will miss it. All of it.
"But I have reached the point that I want to do things for myself and my family," he said.
Connelly and his wife will spend their time between their house on Edisto Beach and the family farm in Hampton County.
His last day is Dec. 31.
"I will miss the place and the friends. This has been a work in progress for 34 years," he said.