Preservation Reports
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Executive Summary
North Carolina’s
signature woodlands, farmlands, and open spaces are disappearing at an alarming
rate. If these trends continue, the
state’s treasured natural areas will disappear as vast tracts of land are
developed into urban areas in the next twenty years.
This report examines development rates in North
Carolina over the last twenty years, and uses those
results to make conservative predictions about loss of cropland and forestland
over the next twenty years. Among the
reports findings:
Between 2007 and 2027:
- North
Carolina will lose another two million acres of
forest land and cropland.
- The
Triangle will lose 37 percent of its natural areas; cropland will
disappear altogether.
- The Charlotte
area will lose 30 percent of is natural areas, including nearly a quarter
of its forest land, the highest rate of forest loss in the state.
- Developed
area in the state will increase by 38 percent, compared to a 30 percent
increase in population.
In the last twenty years, North
Carolina has lost 2.37 million acres of cropland and
forest land, an
estimated 325 acres every day.
In the last twenty years:
- Charlotte,
the state’s largest metro area, lost 25 percent of its total cropland and
forest land for a total of 270,000 acres, the highest percentage loss in
the state.
- The
Triangle region saw 24 percent of its cropland and forest land
transformed. The region lost
283,000 acres of cropland and 123,000 acres of forestland.
- The
Triad region (Greensboro, Winston-Salem,
and High Point) lost 14
percent of its cropland and forest land, a total of 236,000 acres.
From 1987 to the present, developed land in the state has
grown by 1.86 million acres.
- The
Triangle region has more than doubled its developed acreage, adding
327,000 acres.
- Rural
counties in the Piedmont region have added an estimated 322,000 acres of
development.
- The Charlotte
area has added 321,000 acres of developed land, an increase of 88 percent.
Over the same period, population has grown by 40 percent-
remarkably fast, but slowly in comparison to the growth of developed acreage,
which has increased 65 percent.
Solution
The report’s projections for loss of natural areas over the
next twenty years are based only on the trends of the past. North Carolina’s
leaders have the power to alter projections for the future.
In 2006, the NC General Assembly established the Land and
Water Conservation Study Commission to examine ways to finance a significant
increase in funding for the state’s existing land conservation programs—the
Clean Water Management Trust Fund, the Natural Heritage Trust Fund, the Parks
and Recreation Trust Fund, and the Agricultural Development and Farmland
Preservation Trust Fund—as well as to fund new initiatives to capitalize on
economic opportunities associated with land conservation.
After numerous meetings and three public hearings, attended
by more than 1000 citizens, the Commission recommended $1 billion in additional
funds over the next five years—less than one percent of the state’s budget—for
land conservation programs.
This increase in funding, if approved by state leaders, can
ensure the protection of additional 260,000 acres of forests, farmlands,
trails, parks, gamelands, and other natural areas, and more than 6000 miles of
river and stream buffers across the state.
The recommendations of the Land and Water Conservation Study Commission,
if adopted, would go a long way towards protecting the state’s natural areas in
the face of rapid development.
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