Help revive the voice of local Sierra Club

Nancy Duane Cathcart was a powerful voice in the Lowcountry when there were more alligators bellowing than people.

She was known on Hilton Head Island from the 1960s until her untimely death in 1980 as a botanist and fierce champion of the plants, marshes, rivers and wildlife of the Lowcountry.

Today, her name lives on a brown sign marking the Nancy Cathcart Path into the Whooping Crane Pond Conservancy. It’s a quiet place in Hilton Head Plantation where she literally got up to her neck in alligators as Todd Ballantine, Glen McCaskey and a couple of others laid out what we know as the Beany Newhall Boardwalk that takes people face-to-face with our natural wonders.

And her name was given to the Nancy Cathcart Group of the S.C. Sierra Club.

Sadly, that group’s voice faded as people moved or passed away, and the local Sierra Club petered out several years ago. But it may see new life this Saturday. An organizational meeting is to be held from 9 a.m. to noon at the Port Royal Sound Foundation’s Maritime Center at 310 Okatie Highway in Okatie.

“We’ve had a very good response,” said S.C. Sierra Club chair Chris Hall.

If local leaders step forward and the group is revived, its focus will be regional — much broader than its Hilton Head beginnings.

Nancy Cathcart helped define the voice of the community as development began, and that voice is needed now as much as ever.

She wrote columns in Islander magazine in the 1960s and when The Island Packet was created in 1970, she wrote regular columns on the environment called “The Windward Edge” and later “A Voice in the Wilderness.”

Her meticulous details on the island’s environment were published posthumously in a rare book called “The Natural History of Hilton Head Island, S.C.: A Field Guide.”

She stayed in the field, using her biology degree, Jeep, camera and typewriter to document this special place and warn over and over again about its potential mindless demise.

In her book, she quotes the University of Georgia’s father of ecology, Eugene Odom:

“There are some things for which there is no substitute as far as anybody knows. There are no substitutes for energy, water or human values. Man does not and cannot create any vital resources whatsoever. All he can do is to find resources, and use them wisely.”

The Sierra Club group named for Cathcart took stands in environmental impact statements, for example compiling three pages of things that needed to be done during construction of the Cross Island Parkway to preserve the environment. What a shame for that voice to be silenced in Beaufort County.

Statewide, the Sierra Club is now voicing opposition to “automatic stay” legislation to be discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee next Thursday. It would muffle the voice of those challenging environmental permits. It would eliminate the automatic “stay” that puts the challenged construction on hold while due process takes place. It would force anyone making a challenge to put up a costly bond. It would render moot any ruling against construction if that construction had already taken place during the public challenge. It’s a terrible idea. Tell state Sen. Chip Campsen, who represents a portion of Beaufort County and sits on that committee.

Strong voices were needed when we were up to our necks in alligators.

They are needed even more so today.

This story was originally published January 27, 2017 at 8:08 AM with the headline "Help revive the voice of local Sierra Club."