Preservation in the News

There's a lot of good news about the effort North Carolina has put into preserving land and protecting water quality. For more than a decade the state has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into four preservation and protection programs, with significant accomplishments.

Those funds -- the N.C. Agricultural Development and Forestland Preservation Fund, the N.C. Natural Heritage Trust Fund, the N.C. Parks & Recreation Trust Fund and the Clean Water Management Trust Fund -- have leveraged taxpayer money with private donations of cash, land, development rights and easements, federal funds and conservation organizations in an outstanding example of what happens when public-private partnerships collaborate in the public interest.

Just last year those funds helped to purchase and create the new Chimney Rock State Park in Western North Carolina and completed the protection of the entire shoreline in the Alligator River basin in Eastern North Carolina. Those funds also helped save what is now the Haw River State Park from becoming a golf course and, working with the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee, helped restore and preserve the Cherokee Nation's Cowee Mound in Macon County.

In Mecklenburg County alone, more than $1.8 million went into the effort, primarily along Little Sugar Creek. That's part of more than $15 million the funds have spent in Mecklenburg since 1995.

It would be difficult to imagine what North Carolina would look like today without these trust funds and non-profit organizations, but it is evident that the state would not be so green nor would its waters be so clean.

And yet with all the progress the state has made, there remains so much to be done. In 1999 the Hunt administration launched the Million Acre Initiative, a bold program to preserve a million acres within the decade. As year 10 approaches, that goal is only halfway there. At the end of eight years, the effort had averaged about 60,000 acres a year -- far short of what's needed.

That's why the coalition of organizations calling itself Land for Tomorrow has been urging a plan to spend $1 billion over five years to catch up on the backlog and save parts of North Carolina's spectacular natural heritage before it's too late. The group is seeking $150 million in the current short session. That's a lot of money when there are so many other pressing needs, but it's vital to continue progress toward preserving this state's unique natural resources. Lawmakers should dig deep and continue their good works.