Nokuse Plantation is a privately owned nature preserve in

northwest Florida The Florida panhandle (also known as West Florida and Northwest Florida) is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida. It is a salient roughly long, bordered by Alabama on the west and north, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of M ...

's Walton County. It consists of approximately and is the largest privately owned nature preserve in the

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also known as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical List of regions in the United States, region of the United States located in the eastern portion of the Southern United States and t ...

. Founded in 2000, it is funded by timber and oil commodities trader Marion Clifton Davis and his wife, Stella Davis. Its name, Nokuse, is the Native American word for

black bear Black bear or Blackbear may refer to: Animals * American black bear (''Ursus americanus''), a North American bear species * Asian black bear (''Ursus thibetanus''), an Asian bear species Music * Black Bear (band), a Canadian First Nations group ...

in the

Muscogee The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy ( in the Muscogee language; English: ), are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands Here they waged war again ...

language, an

umbrella species Umbrella species are species selected for making wildlife conservation, conservation-related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community (ecology), communit ...

on the preserve. The reserve serves as a haven for the locally threatened

gopher tortoise The gopher tortoise (''Gopherus polyphemus'') is a species of tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species is native to the southeastern United States. The gopher tortoise is seen as a keystone species because it digs burrows that provide she ...

, an inhabitant of

longleaf pine The longleaf pine (''Pinus palustris'') is a pine species native to the Southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from East Texas to southern Virginia, extending into northern and central Florida. In this area it is also known as ...

forests. Tortoises recovered from local urbanised areas have been released into the reserve. Land in the "Northwest Florida Greenway area" was chosen because of the availability of large tracts and because the Florida Panhandle was one of six designated biologically hyperdiverse hotspots in the United States. The majority of property was purchased for $90 million from timber companies and was planted with eight million seedlings to restore it to the kind of pine woodland that had been deforested by the early twentieth century A wildlife underpass connects Nokuse with

Eglin Air Force Base Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) base in the western Florida panhandle, located about southwest of Valparaiso, Florida, Valparaiso in Okaloosa County, Florida, Okaloosa County. The host unit at Eglin is the 96th Test ...

which contains a remnant of longleaf pine forest, with some 500-year-old trees. Nokuse includes a , $12 million nature discovery center named for the evolutionary biologist,

E.O. Wilson Eo or EO may refer to: Businesses and organizations * Education Otherwise, a home education organization * Elevorganisasjonen, a Norwegian student organization * Entrepreneurs' Organization, a nonprofit network * Evangelische Omroep, a publ ...

References

External links

* {{Coord, 30.4597, -85.9587, display=title Nature parks Protected areas of Florida Walton County, Florida