COASTAL OBSERVER

Craig Sasser’s life has come full circle.

After he graduated from Furman University, he worked at Kinloch Plantation.

Now he has left the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, which he helped start 28 years ago, to manage the 5,800-acre plantation on the North Santee River.

“I always dreamed of going there,” he said. “I wanted Kinloch to get back to where it was when I was a kid.”

Guerry Green, a Pawleys Island resident, bought the plantation in March from the family of Ted Turner, who founded CNN and used to own the Atlanta Braves.

“It’s essentially the equivalent of a privately owned refuge. A lot of it is managed wetlands,” Sasser said. “There’s no easy acreage to manage but it’s a very complicated management. It’s kind of me and nature out there and my vision might not be Mother Nature’s vision.”

After graduating from Furman with a degree in biology, Sasser worked at the Baruch Marine Laboratory for two years, the S.C. Waterfowl Association for six years, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 10 years.

As the South Carolina refuge complex biologist, Sasser was assigned to the Waccamaw refuge project when planning began in 1995.

There was a lot of opposition to the project at the beginning, including from Georgetown County Council members who thought it would hurt growth and the widening of Highway 701 to four lanes and from property owners.

“Through time, and a lot of hard work and a lot of building of trust and community goodwill, a lot of the stuff has come together in a way I would have never imagined,” Sasser said. “But also it has helped facilitate land deals and partnerships and trust. So many things just came through time and persistence and doing the best that we could do.”

The turning point was a petition in support of the project that was signed by 100 local business owners.

In 1997, the refuge was created with a donation of 134 acres from the Historic Ricefields Association.

“They wanted to be the facilitator of the establishment of the refuge,” Sasser said. “It was a cool, cool experience getting that and just getting the ball rolling.”

Sasser became the manager in the summer of 2003 when the refuge was about 500 acres. It now has about 38,000 acres.

“I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted to see develop, but I was so new to the organization that I was kind of like, this is probably going to be a unique refuge,” he said. “I got to make a lot of my own mistakes, but also got to learn to live with them and to make things right.”  

An environmental education center and headquarters was built on the 23-acre Yauhannah Bluff tract that overlooks the Great Pee Dee River. It opened in 2009. 

“I don’t think I could have ever imagined that we could have gotten where we are,” Sasser said.

President Theodore Roosevelt established the federal wildlife refuge system in 1903. Waccamaw is one of more than 500 refuges encompassing a total of 859 million acres. 

Since the beginning of the year, Sasser said staffing and funding for the refuge system has fallen to the lowest in his career.

He calls it the “largest conservation setback in the history of the United States.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge that just left the building,” he said. “There’s so many well-seasoned upper management – even mid- and lower-range staff that have a lot of experience – that have taken these buyouts and they’re gone.”

Having the flexibility to do good things in spite of reduced budgets is going to take a “huge learning curve,” Sasser added.

And it’s not just the refuge system that will suffer, he said, it’s things like surveys that help determine waterfowl seasons or the health and viability of a landscape, and forest management.

“It’s going to come down to sportsmen and outdoors people that are going to stand up,” Sasser said. “They pay a large part of the bills for what we do, whether it’s land acquisition or money that goes into habitat restoration. That’s an economic driver that I think will probably influence everyone to not make rash decisions.”

The “division” in the country about federal workers was part of what pushed Sasser to resign.

“There’s so many great people that I’ve worked with that are some of the hardest workers,” he said. “The people I’ve worked with in the Fish and Wildlife Service outwork a lot of the land managers in the private sector. I’ve seen it. There’s a lot of dedication and there’s a lot of tolerance.”

Friends have told Sasser the Fish and Wildlife Service is not the problem, but they support reducing the federal workforce.

The hardest thing about resigning, Sasser said, was leaving behind the people in the community who have supported the refuge from the beginning.

“But I also realize that I’ve got really good people behind me that have been waiting for an opportunity to move up, and I feel confident that they’ll do a really good job,” he added. “What inspired me was to inspire people to have the same dream.”

The refuge’s future will depend on its value to the surrounding community, Sasser said.

“If it weren’t for the community around Yellowstone, then Yellowstone wouldn’t be a popular place to visit,” he added. “They coexist together and there’s a lot of give and take.”

With about $20 million spent on land acquisition, to “mothball” the refuge would be a bad thing for the community, Sasser said.

“I hope we can survive this timeframe and just build better and smarter and do good things in the future,” he added.

Sasser said what he’ll miss the most is the volunteers and his co-workers.

“They’re like family to me,” he added. “I’m leaving something that I really, really gave everything to and loved.”