Governor's Action Jeopardizes Nature Conservancy Mission

April 15, 2009 - PRLog -- (RALEIGH, NC) --  North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue’s decision to take back $100 million of the Clean Water Management Trust Fund’s $121 million available for grants so that she can meet other state needs leaves The Nature Conservancy  “in an extremely awkward and exposed situation,” says Raleigh Metro Magazine columnist Jim Leutze in his column in the April edition now on newsstands.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) works around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters. As a TNC member himself, Leutze explains, “We work as middlemen between private donors, trust funds and state agencies. For instance, if we find that someone wants to sell land meriting conservation adjacent to a state park — and the state doesn’t have the money — we put together a package of private donations and trust fund money, purchase the land, and hold it until the state can buy it.”

Since its official founding in 1950, TNC has managed to preserve 700,000 acres of land “that otherwise would have been lost to the public of our state,” Leutze says. To do that, TNC depends on CWMTF grants.

Now that Governor Perdue has taken the majority of the CWMTF funding back, TNC’s land acquisitions in North Carolina will not go through unless TNC comes up with all the funding itself, Leutze says, noting that the state has already lost more than 600,000 acres of farmland just between 2002-2007. Mecklenburg and Wake counties saw declines between 5000 and 20,000 acres each.

“Everyone understands that the state is in an unenviable situation,” he writes, “and when people are losing their jobs and businesses are going broke, conserving land may seem desirable but not urgent. While recognizing that reality, let me make a couple of additional points. Land available now may not be available later — and certainly not at the price it can be purchased for today. Moreover, the fact that TNC and the CWMTF have backed out of projects in the closing phase will not add to our credibility later when we try to save other tracts from development.”

The most distressing thing, he says, is to see a long-term interest, like land conservation, sacrificed for short-term goals.

Jim Leutze is a former professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, former president of Hampden-Sydney College and most recently chancellor of UNC-Wilmington. To read his entire column, pick up this month’s edition of Raleigh Metro Magazine or go online at www.metronc.com and click on “columnists.”

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About Raleigh Metro Magazine: Established in 1999, Raleigh Metro Magazine is a monthly publication with a circulation of 40,000 with editorial coverage from the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of the state to the coast.