DORCHESTER — These trees lived through Hurricanes Gracie and Hugo, saw Sen. Strom Thurmond come and go, stood quietly while subdivisions and strip malls spread along the coast like ragweed.

Thousands of acres of long leaf pines thrive here, towering over 200 species of plants that cover the forest floor like a green mist. Rare woodpeckers nest in them, black fox squirrels climb on them, bald eagles perch on them.

This place hasn't changed much in centuries. And it never will.

"This is what the entire Southeast looked like at one time," said Lamar Comalander, vice president and consulting forester at Milliken Forestry Company Inc., who has managed the timber on this property since 1981.

Comalander is walking through Brosnan Forest with Josh Raglin, who has been the general manager here for 12 years. They name all the rare animals that roam these woods, the different plants that live in the shade of the giant trees.

They note that 97 percent of long leaf pine forests in the country were wiped out in the past 200 years. The long leaf pine's wood long has been coveted; their insides filled with resin used to make tar and turpentine. Most of these trees were tapped out long ago, but not the ones here.

As they walk, the woods are silent, like a house of worship, which is appropriate — some people consider this a holy place.

Earlier this week, Norfolk Southern Railway Co. granted a conservation easement on the Brosnan Forest to the Lowcountry Open Land Trust. Environmentalists say the ramifications for South Carolina are huge: It preserves more than 12,000 acres of the most threatened ecosystem in North America, becomes a huge link in the growing greenbelt around the Lowcountry, and might be the saving grace of the ACE Basin.

Norman Brunswig, the executive director of Audubon South Carolina, which owns the nearby Francis Beidler Forest, says the Brosnan Forest is a huge link in a growing chain of protected natural areas circling the Lowcountry. It complements the Beidler Forest, Four Holes Swamp and the Francis Marion National Forest as a natural greenbelt, and will provide a watershed for the ACE Basin.

"Our state is distinguishing itself," Brunswig said. "I don't know that any other state has done this much conservation."

Norfolk Southern and its preceding companies have owned this land for 160 years. The property includes part of the route of the Charleston-Hamburg Railroad Line, the first steam-powered railway in the United States and the longest in its day. Today, only eight miles of rail run through these woods.

For decades, Brosnan Forest — named after a pioneering 20th century railroad executive — has been a corporate retreat for Norfolk Southern officials, their guests and employees. Behind the gate on U.S. Highway 78, there is a charming lodge and a series of cabins made from timber harvested on the property. It is a private refuge for folks to fish, hunt, hike, ride ATVs and swim. They used to bring in train cars for visitors to stay in.

"Folks live in the area, drive by every day, and don't know what's here," Raglin said, driving one of the many unpaved roads through the forest. "If there was a 4,000-home subdivision, they would know it."

Raglin credits Norfolk Southern CEO Wick Moorman, "a conservationist at heart," for getting the easement deal moving. They chose the Land Trust as the group to handle the deal.

The railway company has handled things carefully. Company officials excluded a small, former wetland area of the forest from the easement while Comalander's crews convert it back to wetlands; after that, it will be added to the easement.

The forest is a major habitat for red-cockaded woodpeckers. Eighty of the 4,500 groups that survive live here. Besides the woodpeckers, turkeys roam the land, deer are everywhere, and Raglin says they have even found pine snakes, a threatened species, on the property.

But it is the long leaf pines, as much as the woodpeckers, that make Brosnan Forest special. Nowadays, very few of these trees are found anywhere, outside of private plantations. They take a long time to grow, and were almost harvested out of existence decades ago. Nowadays, Norfolk Southern allows contractors to come in and collect extra cones from the trees. They extract the seed and sell them, hopefully replenishing the supply of trees. But it will take time. Most of the larger long leaf pines in Brosnan are about 110 years old.

Raglin says he hopes that Norfolk Southern's conservation easement will act as a catalyst for more conservation. Several nearby landowners have wanted to put conservation easements on their land, he says, but not if the railway had sold part of their land to developers.

That is exactly what most of the state's environmentalists want. Between Beidler and the Francis Marion, and between Brosnan and the ACE Basin, are private tracts, many owned by large corporations. It would be nice, some folks say, if Norfolk Southern inspired others to save their land from bulldozers, fake ponds and zero lot lines.

"I hope it will set a new standard for corporate responsibility," Brunswig said.

Reach Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks@postandcourier.com