`Land for Tomorrow’
Monday, April 30th, 2007
By Chris Fitzsimon
Rapid development underscores need for preservation
One good look around tells you a lot about North Carolina. It’s growing fast, forests and cultivated fields are disappearing and new residential and commercial developments are springing up everywhere. How fast, exactly, is all this happening? If population growth continues, what’s North Carolina going to look like in another 20 years?
Thanks to a compelling report from the conservation group Environment North Carolina, we’ve got some hard data to tell us where we are and to help project where we’ll be. The nonprofit organization has examined census data and a national data bank called the Natural Resource Inventory to document the startling loss of farmland and forests in the past 20 years.
It found that the Charlotte area has lost one-fourth of its cropland and forestland over the past 20 years — 270,000 acres in all — while adding 321,000 acres of developed land. That’s an 88 percent increase, the report said.
The Triangle area around Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill lost 24 percent of its cropland and forestland, and doubled its developed acreage by 327,000 areas. The Triad area — Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point — lost 14 percent of its forest and farmland while rural counties in the Piedmont added 322,000 acres of development. (more…)
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