Chakchiuma Swamp Natural Area, a 300-acre preserve on the edge of downtown Grenada, is being officially dedicated next week in a historic agreement between volunteer conservationists and the city, and will be getting a new name: the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve.
A ceremony dedicating and naming the preserve will take place on May 18 at noon, coinciding with National Police Week and efforts around the country honoring fallen officers.
Tartt, a 44-year-old Grenada native, was killed in the line of duty as a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics agent in 2016.
Tartt, working on a SWAT team, was gunned down when lawmen stormed a house in Tishomingo County where a hostage taker had holed up. Three other officers were wounded in the shootout, and the hostage taker was also killed. Saved in the action were a woman and a 10-year-old girl.
Tartt’s family said he was passionate about the outdoors, having grown up on a family farm, hunting and fishing and often hand-fishing in the Yalobusha River that borders the nature preserve.
He pursued a law enforcement career, working first with the Grenada Police Department to take drugs off the street and dealing with gang violence suppression.
He began working with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics in 2000 and was recognized as an expert in numerous areas. In 2011, he was named Agent of the Year by the MBN; he was awarded the H. Lane Caldwell Award of Valor in 2012; and he received the Medal of Honor from the American Police Hall of Fame posthumously in 2016.
A Mississippi House of Representatives resolution commended his distinguished career later that same year.
The family has saved testimonies from co-workers and friends, and from some of those he arrested, tributes to the humanity he brought to his work.
One inmate, incarcerated for selling cocaine, attested: “One would think that a convicted drug dealer and an MBN agent wouldn’t have much common ground. This wasn’t the case because Lee took it upon himself to share with me his beliefs of his job. ... He told me that he hoped every person he busted would serve their time and get their lives together after being released. He said he wanted that for me.
“I am a better person for having known Lee Tartt.”
Naming the preserve after Tartt came at the request of a major philanthropist and benefactor of Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp, the Grenada group working to preserve the swamp and its surrounding forest. The benefactor, who is from the Jackson area, has said he prefers to remain anonymous.
The public is invited to the ceremony and will be followed by guided tours of the nature preserve.
“The highlight will be the unveiling of the new sign and logo,” said Robin Whitfield, organizer of the event and head of preservation efforts.
Whitfield and the Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp have worked over the last year and a half to prevent a timber cut at the site. With the assistance of Grenada City Manager Trey Baker, they successfully negotiated a lease agreement with the city that was finalized this month, protecting the land for the foreseeable future.
The swamp comprises 300 acres of city-owned property with oxbow lakes and bottomland forest on the lower Yalobusha River and is located on Main Street, five minutes from the Grenada town square.
Preservation and development plans include mapping and tagging trees for the “Forest Friends” campaign, designed to raise funds for the city in exchange for the lease agreement. Individuals and groups can adopt a tree through the program.
A master plan for the preserve is currently underway with Mississippi State University landscape architecture students and Native Habitats Inc., a hired landscape architecture firm.
The preserve will serve as a teaching and learning center, a committed wildlife and forest conservation site and a place of quiet repose in the middle of a city, preservationists say.
Whitfield said naming the preserve for Tartt represents one more partnership in a network of working relations that have resulted in the best possible outcome.
“This unique solution,” she said, “has been a win-win situation for everyone — a city council wishing to manage resources in the best way for their city, citizens interested in quality of life for their community, and a rapidly dwindling wild world preserved for the future.”
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
