An aerial photo of the land that The Nature Conservancy has acquired in Somerset County. (Jack Brown/The Nature Conservancy)

By Isabel Kim, The Allegheny Front

More than 1,100 acres of land in Somerset County have been protected as part of an effort to preserve critical habitat along the Allegheny Front.

On May 16, The Nature Conservancy announced that it acquired 1,158 acres of land and transferred ownership to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. The land is now part of State Game Lands 82.

“This is our first land protection project of this size on the Allegheny Front in Pennsylvania,” said Nicole Wooten, Appalachian land protection manager with The Nature Conservancy. “It fills a large unprotected gap in a critical habitat bridge that plants and animals use to move through the Allegheny Front.”

The Allegheny Front, a 200-mile escarpment stretching from central Pennsylvania through Maryland into West Virginia, plays a vital role in connecting ecosystems throughout the Appalachian region, known for its biodiversity and carbon-storing forests.

“It serves as what we call a habitat bridge between the vast conserved lands in the southern and northern Appalachians, so it plays a vital role keeping the full continental scale Appalachian ecosystem connected,” she said.

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Isabel Kim is a recent graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and one of 10 Pittsburgh Media Partnership summer interns.