Conservation purchase
The Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Group have purchased more than 200,000 acres of forest land from International Paper for $300 million. The properties are all located in the South.
International Paper is thinking about selling off all of its more than six million acres of forest land, igniting concerns that a land grab by developers would lead to more destruction of forests and wildlife habitat. 200,000 acres is a tiny fraction of the land that could be up for grabs, but it's a good start.
International Paper is thinking about selling off all of its more than six million acres of forest land, igniting concerns that a land grab by developers would lead to more destruction of forests and wildlife habitat. 200,000 acres is a tiny fraction of the land that could be up for grabs, but it's a good start.
3 Comments:
Why is it developers always have the money to buy the land while conservation groups and non-developers don't? I guess the banks will lend big bucks to the developers who can pay off the loans when the mcmansions they build sell for 5 times what they cost. It's a crazy world in which we might soon pine for the days when timber companies owned the forests. (pardon the pun)
We just got several chunks of that land down here on the Gulf Coast. It was adjacent to our military bases to protect them from encroachment, as well, as next to existing conservation areas.
Generally, they sold off forests that were badly hit by recent hurricanes and would be expensive to bring back into timber production.
You'll be thrilled to know that the South loses and will continue to lose to development about 1.1 million acres of forestland per year. The huge sell-off of land, such as the sale of 6.8 million acres of International Paper land in the South, the Northeast and the Midwest, is a significant part of the problem. Fortunately, many southern states are stepping up to help protect their natural heritage. NC has a number of wonderful public trust funds to help pay for strategic land acqusition. SC just based bonding authority for their Dept. of Natural Resources...and so on. All this is happening against a backdrop of HUGE drops in federal funding for land acquistion (LWCF funding dropped from around $480 million per year to an expected $78 million this year!). People across the country are voting to tax themselves to generate funding to preserve the character of their communities and their quality of life. Why don't the powers that be in Congress and the Administration see that conservation is/should be/can be a bi-partisan matter? The South must rise again, quickly, to preserve it's natural heritage!
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