North Carolina’s Rapid Development

Our forests, wetlands, and other natural areas restore our rivers and lakes.  They provide chances for recreation and bolster a vibrant tourist economy. Our farmlands sustain a way of life for tens of thousands of families. 

But every day, we lose more than 300 acres of these special places—an area the size of 20 Wal-Marts—to development. 

This development contaminates our rivers and streams, destroys fish and wildlife habitat, and makes the state more susceptible to damaging floods.  What’s more, development threatens the future of some of the state’s best-known and best-loved green spaces.

Chimney Rock Park

Forged by Hickory Creek and the Broad River, Hickory Nut Gorge in Western North Carolina provides home to rare wildlife and spectacular vistas.  Today, the Gorge’s Chimney Rock and Hickory Nut Falls attract hikers, rock-climbers and botanists from the across the state and across the globe.

In 2006, the owners of the privately-owned Chimney Rock Park announced they would put the 1,000 acre property on the open market.  State leaders scrambled to find funds to purchase the property.  In January of 2007, they announced an agreement to add the land to its park system.  Conservation groups have identified more than 1,000 acres more of property in the Hickory Nut Gorge area in need of permanent protection. 

Morrow Mountain

In 2006, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) announced plans to sell much of its land in the Uwharries, and gave the state the chance to buy land adjacent to Morrow Mountain State Park. A popular spot for hikers, boaters and history buffs, the park would benefit from the addition of 1,400 acres along the Pee Dee River.   State officials estimate they need $25 million to purchase the land in the Uwharries. 

A critical time, a great opportunity

This year, thanks to overwhelming support from citizens, champions for land conservation in the legislature have proposed dedicating an additional $1 billion—or less than 1 percent of the state’s budget—to our existing land protection programs over the next five years. 

The Land and Water Conservation plan can help protect more of Hickory Nut Gorge, the Uwharries, and hundreds of other important natural areas like them across the state.  The proposal will help sustain working farms and forests, preserve stream and river buffers, and create new parks and greenways. 

In all, the plan will protect more than 260,000 acres of forests, farmlands, trails, parks, gamelands, and other natural areas, and more than 6000 miles of river and stream buffers.

Preserving our land for tomorrow

Citizen support for preserving our natural areas is already making a difference. In 2005, leaders fully funded the state’s premier land conservation program—the Clean Water Management Trust Fund.  In 2006, hundreds of partner organizations, 97 lawmakers, and thousands of citizens joined the call for increased Land and Water Conservation funding.  And in 2007, leaders announced an agreement to protect Chimney Rock Park.
 
But the state still lacks a permanent, dedicated source of funding for land and water conservation.  That’s why Environment North Carolina is working with the Land for Tommorow Coalition to back the recommendations of the Land and Water Conservation study commission, which will ensure an additional $1 billion goes to existing land conservation programs.