Nokuse Plantation

Nokuse Plantation is a privately owned nature preserve in northwest Florida's Walton County.

It consists of approximately 54,000 acres (220 km2) and is the largest privately owned nature preserve in the Southeastern United States.

[2] Its name, Nokuse, is the Native American word for black bear in the Muscogee language, an umbrella species on the preserve.

The reserve serves as a haven for the locally threatened gopher tortoise, an inhabitant of longleaf pine forests.

[3] 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[4] A wildlife underpass connects Nokuse with Eglin Air Force Base which contains a remnant of longleaf pine forest, with some 500-year-old trees.

Longleaf pine forestry: such forests once covered much of the American southeast.