In addition to providing power to 4.4 million customers throughout their service area (the southeastern United States), the Southern Company puts their money where it counts when it comes to conservation. Their primary stewardship focus is on building collaborative partnerships to conserve habitat, protect wildlife, and educate children, among other services. At their most recent Stewardship Partners meeting this spring in Pensacola Beach, Florida, the Southern Company and their partners discussed the challenges and opportunities of several conservation issues in the southeast, according to the Wildlife Management Institute.

In the past decade, the Southern Company and its partners and grantees have invested more than $94 million in on-the-ground conservation activities, enhancing more than one million acres of habitat throughout the Southeast. With a focus on imperiled and sensitive landscape components, such as restoration of the longleaf pine ecosystem, bird conservation, wetland restoration, and endangered species issues, they have truly committed to the stewardship of the resources that their customers have come to expect. Tellingly, conservation and stewardship are concepts that enjoy vertical integration throughout the company, from the field offices of their subsidiaries up through their corporate headquarters.

The annual culmination and celebration of this "work worth doing" occurs at the Southern Company's annual Stewardship Partners meeting, which has been held jointly with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) each spring for the past 12 years. The meeting allows the Southern Company, NFWF, and their partners to highlight the positive aspects of the work the partners perform together as well as identify the many challenges that lay ahead.

At this spring's meeting, partners discussed the ecological importance of expanding and enhancing the native longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, resulting in improving the quality of habitat and wildlife at a landscape level. Not only were the iconic longleaf species such as gopher tortoise and red-cockaded woodpecker used as examples, the discussion also focused on the emerging imperiled species brought to light by the recent mega-petition (potentially affecting more than 400 species) submitted by Center for Biological Diversity and Wild Earth Guardians that resulted in a settlement agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Stewardship Partners meeting also expounded on another conservation priority of the Southern Company - the conservation of birds through their Power of Flight Initiative. Innovative science on the conservation of globally migrating shore birds, endangered whooping crane migration, and the stressors on beach nesting shorebirds was presented and discussed.

The meeting closed out with two workshops that discussed practical management applications that affect conservation throughout much of the Southeast. A prescribed fire workshop provided panelists and attendees the opportunity to clarify and expand on issues that impact this critical habitat management tool, from perceived and actual liability (for both the landowner and the contractor) to developing local landowner partnerships to create the economy of scale needed to pull off landscape-level prescribed burns. A second workshop focused on building a culture of conservation to protect beach-nesting birds. Each of these workshops was filled to overflowing with conservation-minded professionals.

While the production, generation, and distribution of power is rightfully the primary business of the Southern Company and their subsidiaries, it is refreshing to see that they and their partners place significant capital, resources, expertise, and importance on the conservation side of the energy equation. As energy continues to play a pivotal role in wildlife conservation, the Southern Company should be held up as a model on how energy and conservation are not mutually exclusive. (jwg)