Honda recently donated 90 acres of its property to The Nature Conservancy’s Big Darby Headwaters Preserve. The property, west of U.S. 33, runs along County Road 144 in Logan County. (Photo submitted)
Honda is working to reaffirm its longstanding commitment to protect the environmentally fragile headwaters of the Big Darby Creek watershed.
This week the company donated 90 acres of land as part of its partnership with The Nature Conservancy in Ohio.
“As citizens of this watershed, it’s imperative we do our part to protect it,” Tom Shoupe, executive vice president of Honda of America, wrote in a statement about the donation. “Honda understands the significance of this property and will continue to protect and preserve the Big Darby Creek watershed.”
The 90 acres is in Logan County and was part of the company’s complex that includes the Marysville Auto Plant, Transportation Research Center, the East Liberty Auto Plant, Honda Research and Development and the Honda Heritage Center. The land, valued at $280,000, is near The Nature Conservancy’s Big Darby Headwaters Preserve.
The Nature Conservancy describes the 900-acre Big Darby Headwaters Preserve as “a beautiful landscape of wetlands, rolling fields and streamside forests.”
The preserve is home to small, cold-water springs that form headwater tributary streams and contribute millions of gallons of water to the nearby Big Darby Creek.
“These streams, and the floodplains, forests and wetlands around them are an important influence on water quality and the Big Darby watershed,” according to The Nature Conservancy.
The preserve provides habitat for plants and animals and protects three miles of the Big Darby Creek, nearly a mile and a half of which the Conservancy restored to correct past stream channel degradation.
The preserve features a one-third mile accessible trail to a spring-fed wetland overlook and a one-mile grass trail to an overlook of a restored section of the Big Darby Creek.
Along the trails, The Nature Conservancy provides signage that describes the importance of the headwaters and wildlife and explains the stream restoration process.
Nearly 30 years ago, Honda of America Mfg., Inc. and the Ohio chapter of The Nature Conservancy began a public and private sector partnership to preserve this watershed, which is one of the Midwest’s most biologically diverse aquatic systems.
“We want to thank Honda for the nearly $1 million in philanthropic grants we’ve received since this partnership began which have been invaluable in advancing our conservation and volunteer program efforts, especially here in Central Ohio,” Bill Stanley, state director for The Nature Conservancy in Ohio, wrote in a statement about the donation. “We thank Honda for this generous donation of land, which adds a critical piece to the conservation puzzle and grows our Big Darby Headwaters Nature Preserve to more than 1,000 acres.”
The Big Darby Creek is one of the healthiest tributaries to the Scioto River, which provides drinking water for tens of thousands of Ohioans. The Big Darby Creek watershed is one of the healthiest and most diverse aquatic systems of its size in the Midwest.
Honda’s efforts with The Nature Conservancy in Ohio to protect the headwaters of the Big Darby Creek and other initiatives have included donations of over $1 million over the course of the past 30 years for things like a protection program, stream monitoring, headwater restoration, improved access, environmental stewardship and operational support.
The Big and Little Darby Creeks are noted nationally for their tremendous diversity and abundance of both aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals. The creeks are home to 86 species of fish, five of which are endangered in Ohio, and 41 species of freshwater mollusk, eight of which are on the Ohio endangered list.
The Nature Conservancy is an international, nonprofit organization. The Nature Conservancy in Ohio was established in 1958 and has helped protect more than 60,000 acres of ecologically significant land and waters.
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December 05, 2020 at 10:18PM
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Honda donates land to help preserve Big Darby watershed - Marysville Journal Tribune
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