Tree Preservation

Conservation of Natural Resources

TREE PRESERVATION

Public perception often characterizes highway construction as a destructive activity that ignores the environment.  This stereotype is certainly an oversimplification of reality.  Highway construction does, in fact, require that the landscape be altered to meet design needs and safety demands, but because of this very nature of highway construction, SCDOT has become keenly aware of the importance of minimizing destruction and optimizing the incorporation of indigenous environmental features into highway plans. SCDOT places a high priority on tree preservation.

This is particularly important in the Lowcountry where live oaks grow wild.  Some of these trees are more than three hundred years old.  SCDOT often adjusts the “footprint” of new highways in order to protect native live oaks.  The Department has been researching new techniques for moving large-caliper trees.  The process has proven to be expensive and the success rate is low, but this process will continue to be researched.

Based on public input received in 2003, SCDOT redesigned the US 21 highway widening project to preserve the Emancipation Oak on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County.  This Oak was the site where President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was first read to slaves in the Low country of South Carolina.  A professional arborist was consulted and using the arborist’s recommendations, SCDOT helped maintain this historic tree’s health by removing vines covering the tree.

In Charleston County, Maybank Highway transitions from an urban area to a rural Lowcountry salt marsh as it crosses the Stono River into a dense tree lined roadway to the west.  Before undertaking construction along this pristine roadway, SCDOT surveyed the corridor to identify and evaluate the impacts to large trees, especially the live oaks. Environmental scientists then developed a preservation-mitigation plan to minimize impacts by modifying the design to achieve maximum avoidance, and by planning and using construction and landscaping measures to protect tree health during and after construction.