Harrison Marks remembers looking past his father’s shoulder at the excitement unfolding on stage.

Marks can only assume he was scooped up and out of The Waterside Theatre on Roanoke Island because “The Lost Colony” performance was “more than he could stand” at the tender age of 3 or 4.

That’s one of his earliest memories in the upper Outer Banks, the seaside destination his father sought in lieu of Virginia Beach, a resort city the family patriarch believed to be too developed by the 1950s.

“I really have to check myself to not be completely like him in terms of lamenting,” Marks said.

The outgoing executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has nothing to gain by dwelling on the days when the Outer Banks and wider coastline were scattered with little more than fishing hamlets.

“We are an attractive place to live,” Marks said. “Unfortunately, what that means is, just like I was attracted to be here, many other people are attracted to be here, so I’m very conscious of the fact that we have to prepare for growth and accommodate growth in a smart way. But, if we want to maintain the character of eastern North Carolina, I think it’s really important to set aside some space and that’s what this job has allowed me to help do.”

This fall, he will officially step down as the nonprofit’s executive director to assume the role of senior adviser.

Associate Director Jesica Blake, a keystone employee of the organization for more than 20 years, will take over as executive director on Oct. 1.

“I am deeply honored to be entrusted with this role,” Blake stated in a July 1 release announcing her promotion. “The Coastal Land Trust has been my professional home for more than two decades, and I understand its mission, its people, and its potential at every level. I look forward to building on the extraordinary foundation Harrison and his team have created, and to doing whatever it takes to protect the lands and waters of coastal North Carolina for generations to come.”

Marks isn’t keen on accepting the praise directed his way since the announcement.

“One of the things that’s bother me a little bit is I’m getting credit for every good thing that’s happened in four years. Most of those things were in motion and I was lucky enough to be here as they happened. Jesica’s just so ready to do this and to the degree I helped in that happening at all, I’m really, really pleased about that,” he said.

He’s proud of the organization’s accomplishments during his time as executive director, notably the Coastal Land Trust’s April 2025 acquisition of land on the southern tip of Topsail Island known as “The Point,” one of the last remaining privately owned, undeveloped tracts on the state’s barrier islands. Earlier this year, the land was transferred to the state, which will maintain and protect the property.

The organization is scheduled to close on the third phase of its conservation partnership on the Newport River with the North Carolina Coastal Federation and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

That project entails the protection and restoration of more than 2,000 acres of land along the river.

And the organization most recently announced it had reached an agreement with a developer to permanently protect more than 3,200 acres of Sledge Forest, a sprawling tract of land in northern New Hanover County that features ancient forests, vast wetlands, and riverine habitat.

When Marks became the interim executive director a few years back, he figured he’d only be in the job for six months, tops.

By then, the Richmond, Virginia, native had pivoted careers from the banking industry to the great outdoors.

Marks was on his way to earning a degree in biogeography at Dartmouth College when, while conducting research in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, he discovered that fieldwork was not for him.

“I thought if I do something like this, I’m going to end up hating the outdoors,” he said.

After graduation, he landed a job at Wachovia National Bank, which was headquartered in Winston-Salem at that time.

He may have spent his successful executive years indoors rather than in nature, but the work still provided him with a profound sense of purpose.

“I felt like it was a little bit of a calling,” Marks said. “Historically, if you worked at Wachovia, you didn’t make as much money as you would if you were willing to work at some other places, but you stayed because it felt like it mattered you were there.”

He no longer had that feeling when Wachovia merged with First Union in 2001. He retired from banking in the early 2000s at the age of 55.

Less than a decade later, Marks, after returning to his environmental roots, would oversee the 2015 merger of two of the state’s oldest grassroots conservation organizations, the Pamlico-Tar River Foundation and Neuse River Foundation.

Marks was Sound Rivers executive director for four years before retiring a second time in 2017.

He and his wife, Suzie, sailed the east coast and the Bahamas for the next couple of years. He’d been an active member of the Coastal Land Trust’s finance committee by the time he joined the organization’s board of directors in 2021.

He thought the couple had made their last move, from New Bern back to Winston-Salem, when he stepped in as the Coastal Land Trust’s interim executive director in September 2022.

They were on the road from their Winston-Salem home to Wilmington when his wife opened with the ultimate ominous conversation starter: “We need to talk.”

She pointed out how he was really enjoying the work he was doing with the Coastal Land Trust. She would support him staying on as executive director if that’s what he would like to do.

“That really opened the door,” Marks said. “The board was starting its search for a permanent executive director and I went back to the board and said, ‘I’d be willing to stay on if you want me.’”

The board did.

Marks and his wife purchased a home in Wilmington a couple of years ago on a plot of land on the banks of a small cypress pond, a sanctuary for Anhinga, egrets, mallards and geese.

“I don’t think you could blast us out of here,” Marks said. “Winston-Salem is a wonderful place to live. It’s close to the mountains, which is nice, but we really are fundamentally water people. We’d much rather be here near the water, so we’re here for good.”

A coastal land conservation group has reached an agreement with a developer to permanently protect a sprawling tract of land in New Hanover County featuring ancient forests, vast wetlands, and riverine habitat.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust announced Thursday a tentative purchase and sale agreement with Charlotte-based Copper Builders to preserve more than 3,200 acres of Sledge Forest.

“This is one of the most significant conservation opportunities in New Hanover County in a generation,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said in the press release. “More than 3,200 acres, a landscape larger than Carolina Beach State Park, will be permanently protected in the heart of one of the fastest-growing counties on the North Carolina coast. That is what this agreement means.”

The fate of the deal hinges on the construction of Hilton Bluffs, a controversial 1,800-home development covering 600 acres of the privately owned 4,000-acre tract. The project, conditionally approved by the New Hanover County Technical Review Committee in March, continues to face heavy backlash among locals and thousands of activists backing the Save Sledge Forest movement.

“We appreciate what Coastal Land Trust is trying to do here, but we believe that this approach just doesn’t go far enough,” Castle Hayne resident and Save Sledge Forest cofounder Kayne Darrell explained Thursday during a telephone interview. “This community is steadfast in our belief that no development at all is best for our community and Sledge Forest. This agreement does not in any way change Copper Builder’s proposed Hilton Bluffs development of 1,800 homes on 500-plus acres. That remains exactly the same. And while conservation of these unbuildable wetlands in Sledge Forest is important, it does nothing to reduce the impacts of that development in this small, rural community.”

In the announcement last week, the Coastal Land Trust stated it “is not taking a position” on whether Hilton Bluffs should be approved.

“Its commitment is straightforward: if the project proceeds as currently approved, the Coastal Land Trust will ensure that more than 3,200 acres are permanently protected, publicly accessible, and managed to the highest conservation standards,” the organization stated.

Sledge Forest is home to ancient trees, including 500-year-old bald cypress, longleaf and loblolly pines more than 300 years old and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic white cedar.

The forest is designated a North Carolina Natural Heritage Program Nationally Significant Natural Area, sheltering 13 imperiled plant species and several at-risk animal species. Last year, the forest was added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests.

Sledge Forest is also part of the Northeast Cape Fear River floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

“What we would be conserving is really the heart of the property,” Marks explained Thursday in a telephone interview. “It is the most ecologically important area of this entire tract.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Copper Builders will donate 1,200 acres to the Coastal Land Trust at no cost. The nonprofit will purchase 2,000 acres through a bargain sale.

“The bargain sale certainly helps matters,” Marks said, adding that the organization will apply for grants and that “some kind of fundraising is likely.”

Thousands of people have viewed and shared on social media a video clip and story of waterside tours of the forest.

Darrell highlighted the “extraordinary response” the videos had generated from people across the country. Within days of the videos posting, another 1,000 people had signed Save Sledge Forest’s petition, she said.

As of Friday afternoon, the petition had more than 15,500 signatures and counting.

At its meeting next month, New Hanover County Board of Adjustment is expected to hear appeals from adjacent Castle Hayne property owners regarding the proposed subdivision.

They argue that Hilton Bluffs would add thousands of additional vehicles on rural roads that cannot accommodate them, strip the landscape of hundreds of acres of trees and increase the threat of flooding, disrupt the surrounding ecosystem, and potentially compromise a state-designated inactive hazardous site on adjacent property.

“We intend to remain focused on the legal appeal of our county’s erroneous conditional approval of the Hilton Bluffs project,” Darrell said. “We’re going to continue to move forward with this appeal process and we’re going to do so with confidence and determination. We’re prepared to challenge this development as long as it takes.”

The popular expanse of undeveloped land known as ‘The Point’ at the south end of Topsail Island was ceremoniously transferred on Tuesday to the state, which will manage and protect the property.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson joined officials with the North Carolina Land Trust and local beach towns, including Topsail Beach, on the oceanfront shore the Topsail Nature Preserve on Monday afternoon to officially mark the transfer.

“The Topsail Nature Preserve is a unique coastal resource and we are committed to protecting its natural integrity and maintaining responsible public access,” Wilson said. “Conserving places like this strengthens the long-term resilience of our coastal communities, protects natural habitats and preserves the natural features that help our coast adapt to changing environmental conditions.”

The ceremony turned the page in the newest chapter of the spit of pristine land in Topsail Beach, the southernmost town on the nearly 26 mile-long island that runs through Onslow and Pender counties.

The land had been in the center of a campaign by Topsail Island locals and long-time tourists who wanted to keep it free from development, a goal that was ultimately achieved when the Coastal Land Trust purchased nearly 100 acres of the privately owned property for $7.5 million in April of last year.

“The Coastal Land Trust is proud to have partnered with the Topsail community to help conserve the South End,” North Carolina Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said in a release. “We are thrilled to see this remarkable coastal resource permanently protected for future generations under the stewardship of the State of North Carolina.”

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management will manage the preserve, which will remain open and accessible to the public, “with a continued emphasis on conservation, education and responsible recreation,” according to a DEQ release.

“Visitors are encouraged to follow posted guidelines designed to protect wildlife, sensitive habitats and the overall integrity of the site,” the release states.

The area will be managed in coordination with local and state partners and will include the implementation of best practices for coastal stewardship and opportunities for community engagement.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust is hosting its 16th annual Flytrap Frolic on Saturday, June 6, in Wilmington.

Participants of the free event will receive an education on the types of carnivorous plants that grow in southeastern North Carolina, why they grow there, and how they trap their prey.

The event will be held 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden, 3800 Canterbury Road, where garden guides will help guests find carnivorous plants in the garden and answer questions.

There will be carnivorous plant-themed games, arts and crafts, and face painters, educational tables with partners from Halyburton Park, Carolina Beach State Park, The North American Sarracenia Conservancy and The Nature Conservancy.

A limited number of ethically sourced flytraps will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis to benefit the Coastal Land Trust.

Anyone who would like to volunteer at the event may sign up online.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust plans to buy a sprawling tract of land off one of Wilmington’s busy corridors to convert it into a publicly accessible nature preserve.

The New Hanover County Board of Commissioners on Monday authorized county staff to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement with the Coastal Land Trust for an approximately 60-acre tract at 3990 Independence Boulevard.

The organization plans to buy the land, referred to as the Flossie Bryan tract, for $3 million.

Bryan was a longtime Wilmington resident and licensed practical nurse who worked at James Walker Memorial Hospital, which operated for more than 60 years until it closed after New Hanover Regional Medical Center opened its doors in 1967.

Bryan willed the property to the county and asked that it be preserved, offering a natural, undeveloped space for public benefit, according to a Coastal Land Trust release.

“Flossie Bryan left an extraordinary gift to this community, and we take that trust seriously,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks stated in the release. “This property sits in the middle of one of the fastest-growing residential corridors in New Hanover County. Protecting it permanently as a nature preserve means generations of Wilmington residents will have access to irreplaceable green space, right where they live. We are grateful to the Board of Commissioners for their partnership on this property, and for their vision and foresight in securing full ownership of the property in 2025, which created the opportunity to ensure its long-term conservation.”

The Coastal Land Trust aims to work with county staff to finalize a purchase and sale agreement, with closing proposed to occur on or before Dec. 31, 2027.

Commissioners will review the sale agreement before final approval.

Within the tract are more than seven acres of mature longleaf pine forest, among the few remaining unprotected longleaf pine savanna habitats in New Hanover County. And, there are more than 20 acres slated for longleaf pine restoration.

Natural freshwater wetlands and headwater tributaries of Barnards Creek are also on the property.

Once under the Coastal Land Trust’s ownership, the preserve will be developed in phases to include a parking area and natural train system, which will be largely unpaved, designed for nature-first recreation and outdoor learning, and will incorporate Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible areas.

Coastal Land Trust’s longer-term plans for the property include an onsite environmental education facility.

“The Flossie Bryan tract offers a rare opportunity to protect and restore one of the most ecologically important habitat types in our region, in the county with the highest population density along the North Carolina coastal plain,” Kenneth Lingerfelt, Coastal Land Trust director of land protection said in a release. “Conserving this property means protecting water quality in the Barnards Creek watershed and ensuring that this irreplaceable longleaf pine habitat is never lost.”

The Coastal Land Trust plans to launch a public and private fundraising campaign to raise the $3 million needed to buy the tract.

The Coastal Land Trust has created and manages a number of nature preserves across eastern North Carolina, including Brunswick Nature Park, the Latham-Whitehurst Nature Park in Craven County, Brice’s Creek Nature Preserve in New Bern, and Springer’s Point Preserve on Ocracoke Island. The organization also manages the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden in Wilmington in partnership with the city.

Whether its a nature hike, a stormwater tour at North Carolina’s premiere coastal university, or helping a town’s staff permanently mark storm drains, there’s something for nearly everyone during Cape Fear Creek Week.

Creek Week kicks off on Sunday and goes through March 21, offering opportunities to connect with, celebrate, and care for local waterways of the Cape Fear Region.

Throughout the week, participants are invited to play Cape Fear Creek Week virtual bingo by completing activities for a chance to win a swag bag.

The events lineup starts Sunday with a birding walk from 10-11 a.m. in Leland, where participants will be given tips on how to identify local and migrating birds. Registration for this event is through the town of Leland.

On Monday, gather beneath cypress trees in Wallace Park at 2110 Market St. in Wilmington for a scavenger hunt from 10 a.m. until 11 a.m. The Alliance for Cape Fear Trees will have resources on hand to share tips on how to properly plant and care for trees.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington is hosting that afternoon a behind-the-scenes tour of its stormwater-control measures, including rain gardens, permeable pavement systems and other sustainable features that reduce runoff and support healthier waterways. This event will be held 2-3 p.m. Monday at 4935 Riegel Road. Registration is required.

On Monday evening, discover ways to diagnose and restore wetland habitats through Habitat Fixer Uppers with Fort Fisher Aquarium, a program scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. at 1212 Magnolia Village Way in Leland. You may register here.

Tuesday, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority will host a tour of its Southside Water Reclamation Facility, 3436 River Road in Wilmington. Registered participants must be age 5 or older.

Events for Wednesday include a bird hike at Burnt Mill Creek 8-9:30 a.m., an opportunity to work alongside employees of Leland’s engineering department 4-5:30 p.m. to permanently mark the town’s storm drains, a children’s scavenger hunt 5-6 p.m. at Cypress Cover Park in Leland, and resilient coastal communities program public meeting drop in between 5p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Skyline Center in downtown Wilmington.

Events later in the week include a golden hour guided tour by paddleboat in Greenfield Lake Park, a walking tour at Pages Creek, a sustainability brewery tour at Mad Mole Brewing (for those 21 and older), a Brunswick Nature Park tour in Winnabow, and a cleanup at Greenfield Lake Park.

Details, including all dates, times and locations, are available on the N.C. Cooperative Extension website.

Cape Fear Creek Week is a collaboration between the N.C. Cooperative Extension, Wilmington’s Heal our Waterways, Leland, Cape Fear River Watch, New Hanover County Soil and Water Conservation District, Cape Fear Public Utility Authority, Coastal Land Trust, Cape Fear Birding Observatory, Plastic Ocean Project, Mad Mole Brewery, UNCW Sustainability, and Alliance for Cape Fear Trees.

This story has been updated to include a corrected description of land ownership. Information initially provided to Coastal Review had incorrectly identified the owner.

More people moved to North Carolina last year from different parts of the country than any other state in the nation.

North Carolina’s population grew by almost 150,000 people, trailing behind only Texas and Florida, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last month.

As political leaders grapple with the demands that growth is placing on essential services like water and sewer, public safety and education, pressure is mounting on conservation groups to acquire, conserve and preserve land.

This month, more than 2,000 acres in coastal counties have been secured for permanent protection from development.

These newly protected areas are filled with natural landscape features that reduce flood risk, improve water quality, and provide habitat for plants and animals that are increasingly getting squeezed out by encroaching development.

In Brunswick County, one of the fastest growing in the state, North Carolina-based conservation nonprofit Unique Places to Save acquired land that serves as a corridor between two protected natural areas, bridging what amounts to nearly 10,000 acres of conserved landscape.

“We really want to be able to maintain large, connected natural areas for habitat for species and to maintain biodiversity of our natural areas,” Unique Places to Save Executive Director Christine Pickens told Coastal Review in a recent telephone interview. “And, particularly, in the southeast of North Carolina, we have some really cool endemic species and really wonderful habitats that you don’t find anywhere else.”

Within the 1,040-acre tract nestled between the towns of St. James and Boiling Spring Lakes are forested wetlands, Carolina bays, sandy pine and wet sandy pine savanna.

The tract, referred to as Boiling Springs Wilderness, specifically connects thousands of acres of privately conserved land including Orton with the North Carolina Boiling Spring Lakes Plant Conservation Preserve.

“When you connect these large areas, you’re connecting a mosaic across the landscape and there’s tiny variations of habitat availability,” Pickens explained. “What that does is allow species that use that area for habitat or refuge or migration to use those slight variations of habitat. When we experience extremes in weather, precipitation or drought or big storms, having just a little bit of wiggle room in terms of available habitat goes a long way to allowing species to be resilient to some of these extremes and some of these changes.”

Habitat that is free from being sliced up by ditches or roads is valuable to species that rely on that habitat, she said.

Take the red cockaded woodpecker, for example. These birds, which were reclassified in late 2024 from endangered to threatened, live in groups, or clusters, helping each other raise their young.

They depend on large, connected natural areas – typically anywhere from 125 to 200 acres – where living pine trees, preferably mature, longleaf pine forests, grow.

Boiling Springs Wilderness includes varying types of soils that support different sets of plants, trees, shrubs and forbs, more commonly referred to as herbs.

A good deal of pond pine and a “little bit” of young longleaf pine grace its landscape, Pickens said.

The headwaters of Orton Creek are within the project area, as are wetlands that blanket the Castle Hayne aquifer, a drinking water source for thousands of Brunswick County residents and tens of thousands in other coastal North Carolina areas.

“That’s a long-term way to protect water quality,” Pickens said. “The areas around streams act as buffers to absorb nutrients, runoff, excess components in surface water that soak in, and they get absorbed by the plants and the roots and the soils around streams. That prevents excess nutrients getting into waterways.”

Then there are the wetlands, which function like nature’s sponges, absorbing stormwater that might otherwise flood developed properties.

“Every chance we get to conserve wetlands is really important right now,” Pickens said.

That’s because state lawmakers decided to align North Carolina’s definition of wetlands with that of the federal government, which is in the process of changing the interpretation of waters of the United States that may omit protections for millions of acres of wetlands in the state.

“It may result in more wetlands being nonjurisdictional, therefore a lot more likely to be converted to uplands through ditching and draining. These conservation easements are perpetual. Once we protect it, that’s it,” Pickens said.

The Boiling Springs Wilderness project was funded through a $3.68 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant.

Unique Places to Save will own and manage the tract, while the state will hold the conservation easement. The Coastal Land Trust will steward that easement.

Last year, Unique Places to Save applied for another state Land and Water Fund grant to protect about 500 acres of predominately wetlands between the town of St. James and N.C. Highway 211.

“We’ve got a provisional award from the Land and Water Fund so if they have enough funding we may get funded this year for that effort,” Pickens said.

She touted efforts among other groups that work to conserve land throughout the state, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Plant Conservation Program, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and Cape Fear Arch to name a few.

Tyrrell County parcel transferred

Last week, national nonprofit The Conservation Fund finalized the transfer of ownership of about 1,550 acres of coastal wetlands and forestland in Tyrrell County to the Coastal Federation.

“This partnership reflects years of careful conservation planning and cooperation,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis stated in a release. “This acquisition protects important coastal wetlands that help filter water, support fish and wildlife habitat, and provide natural flood buffering in on the of the state’s most ecologically significant regions.”

Portions of the Tyrrell County property, which is valued at an estimated $1.7 million, are in the Land and Water Fund’s Stewardship Program, one designed to establish, monitor and enforce perpetual conservation agreements.

The property will be included as part of the Coastal Federation’s Land for a Healthy Coast program, which focuses on protecting estuaries, reducing polluted runoff, buffering floods, and boosting long-term coastal resilience.

“Some lands are simply too important to risk losing,” Coastal Federation founder and senior adviser Todd Miller said in the release. “When a property protects water quality, supports fisheries, and strengthens the natural defenses of the coast, we believe it’s our responsibility to step forward and ensure it is permanently conserved and well managed.”

Plans for the sprawling, undeveloped, south-end tract on Topsail Island that the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust purchased last year call for its eventual transfer to the state to be managed and preserved in perpetuity.

But first, the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management must hear whether the public supports its proposal to use no more than $50,000 in grant funding to cover closing costs related to the trust’s donation of that land to the state.

A public hearing has been scheduled for 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 during the Coastal Resources Commission meeting at Dunes Club, 710 E. Fort Macon Road in Atlantic Beach.

The division would tap funds from the state Public Beach and Coastal Waterfront Access Grant on a non-competitive basis to cover closing costs, including deed preparation and recording fees and, if obtained, title insurance.

The Coastal Land Trust finalized its $7.5 million purchase of ‘The Point’ last April.

The proposal to use non-competitive funds would cover costs associated with the state’s acquisition of nearly 100 of about 150 acres the land trust bought last year in Topsail Beach. The Division of Coastal Management “will manage and preserve the property for public benefit and support current and future public access to coastal waters,” according to a release.

“The exact amount of closing costs associated with this property transfer is currently unknown and will be determined at the time of closing based on applicable legal, recording, and administrative requirements,” the release states.

The division has opened a public comment period that continues through April 1.

Written comments may be mailed to Tancred Miller, Director, Division of Coastal Management, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, N.C. 28557, or emailed to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov with the subject line Non-competitive Use – NC Public Land Trust.

Learn why controlled burns are crucial to maintaining thriving native longleaf pine habitats at this year’s Fire in the Pines Festival in Wilmington.

Now in its 15th year, the festival hosts nature-themed exhibits, hay rides, food trucks, live music and animals, and the grand finale: a controlled burn demonstration.

The festival will be 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Saturday in Halyburton Park, 4099 S 17th St.

The festival is a collaboration among organizations including The Nature Conservancy, N.C. Forest Service, Wilmington Recreation and Downtown Services, Halyburton Park, and North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to raise awareness about the importance of controlled burning and its relationship to longleaf pine forests.

Parking will be available only at Lifepoint Church at 3600 South College Road with free trolley service to and from the festival.

In the event of rain, the festival will be rescheduled for Oct. 11.

This is one trap you may not mind falling for.

The annual “Flytrap Frolic,” what organizers call a one-of-a-kind celebration of Venus flytraps and other carnivorous plants, is scheduled 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 7, at the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden, 3800 Canterbury Road, Wilmington.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust is hosting the family-friendly event that allows participants to get up close with meat-eating plants, learn about their adaptations, and why it’s important to protect their natural habitats.

The event will include carnivorous plant-themed games, arts and crafts, and face painters. Garden guides will be on hand to answer questions and help guests find carnivorous plants in the garden.

Ethically-sourced flytraps will be for sale to benefit the land trust on a first-come, first-served basis.

Anyone interested in volunteering to help at the event may sign up online.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust has purchased the expanse of land at the south end of Topsail Island known as ‘The Point.’

“This landmark conservation victory follows an ambitious, yearlong fundraising effort and culminated with the purchase of the property,” on Tuesday, the Coastal Land Trust announced.

“This is a once-in-a-generation victory for conservation on the coast,” Harrison Marks, the trust’s executive director, said in the release. “We are deeply grateful to the partners, donors, and volunteers who made this possible.”

After launching a fundraising campaign in March 2024, the Coastal Land Trust raised nearly $8 million, including more than $1.6 million in contributions from nearly 800 donors, and through several major public funding sources.

One acre of the site, which includes a parking area managed by Topsail Beach, was sold to the town as part of the transaction.

The nearly 150-acre tract was on and off the market for decades, but attempts from prospective buyers, including Topsail Beach, which wanted to keep the land free from development, never panned out.

Efforts to keep the land development free gained traction after the CEO of a Raleigh-based software company and his wife initiated talks with the town to rezone a portion of the property to allow the couple to build a family compound, complete with about a half-dozen homes, a private marina, pool and beach and sound accesses.

Their proposal was met with fierce opposition from area property owners, regular vacationers to the town, and environmentalists who’ve enjoyed walking the shores of the land that has accreted as New Topsail Inlet migrates south.

The tract stretches from the ocean to Banks Channel and includes expansive dunes, estuarine wetlands, and maritime shrub forest that provide critical habitat for dozens of bird species and loggerhead sea turtles.

“This beautiful and beloved section of Topsail is now protected forever,” Topsail Beach Mayor Frank Braxton said in a release. “We’re thrilled to partner with the Coastal Land Trust to ensure its natural beauty is preserved for future generations.”

The land will be placed in conservation in perpetuity and will be transferredto the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management.

Division Director Tancred Miller announced the purchase during the Coastal Resources Commission’s Wednesday meeting in Dare County.

Miller said Coastal Land Trust will transfer the land at no cost in the next year or so, after which time the property will be managed by the division for “public access and environmental protection.”

“So we’re very grateful for that partnership with Coastal Land Trust. We think it’s a wonderful thing for the state of North Carolina and everyone who visits that area,” Miller said.

Funding for the project has been approved by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through Walmart’s Acres for America program, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s North American Wetlands Conservation Act and National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant programs.

Coastal Land Trust has secured a bridge loan in order to meet the closing deadline since the organization will not receive grant funds for several more months, according to the release.

“This project is a model for collaborative coastal conservation and an excellent example of the lasting benefits that Acres for America grants can provide to wildlife and communities,” Chris West, Acres for America Program director, said in the release. “This effort will conserve critical habitat for wildlife and offer lasting benefits for current and future generations of North Carolinians to enjoy.”

Until the land is transferred to the state, it will be owned and managed by the trust, which will work with volunteers and partners to protect nesting bird habitat, remove debris, and lead educational beach walks. Partners and volunteers will include Audubon North Carolina and members of Conserve the Point, a grassroots organization.

Additional information on volunteer opportunities is available at www.CoastalLandTrust.org/TopsailBeach or by emailing Topsail@CoastalLandTrust.org.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust invites you to celebrate all things pollinators at this year’s “Pollinator Palooza!”

The event being offered at no charge will take place 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 26 at the land trust’s headquarters office, 3 Pine Valley Drive, Wilmington.

The family-friendly event will include educational activities and information regarding pollinators and native plants.

Organizers encourage attendees to arrive early for a chance to receive one of the 30 parsley plants that will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis. There will also be seeds available for strawberry, cosmos, basil, nasturtium, and borage plants, which may be planted to create a pollinator garden.

The land trust is hosting multiple workshops with elementary afterschool programs in Onslow, Pender, New Hanover, and Brunswick counties.

The event is part of the @ncscifest, a monthlong celebration and educational program that runs through April and highlights the importance of pollinators in nature and our food supply.

If you have questions about the event you may contact Bryce Tholen at bryce@coastallandtrust.org.

You can’t help but wonder what Reaves Chapel’s first parishioners would think if they were around to see the little church in Navassa today.

Would they marvel at the fact that the chapel they’d built more than a century ago on the bluffs of the Cape Fear River in Brunswick County will serve as a testament to their existence?

Could they begin to comprehend the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to painstakingly restore the church to its former glory?

Perhaps they’d share feelings similar to those of the people who’ve devoted years to seeing a project through to preserve one of the oldest African American buildings in southeastern North Carolina.

“Every time we’ve been there this year and walked in with the new floor in and finished, it’s nothing but full body joy,” said Jesica Blake, North Carolina Coastal Land Trust associate director. “Reaves Chapel and other structures in other places that have ties to the history in African American communities are very few and far between. Time and weather and lack of resources have all come in to play in making it so there’s not a lot there and so it’s really important for this original structure that can tell so many layers of history can be protected. Now it will stand for generations to come.”

The chapel in Navassa is set to be dedicated on Friday, marking the end of a long chapter in the building’s storied history, one that enshrines at least some fraction of the lives of those formerly enslaved at Cedar Hill Plantation.

“In terms of history, what really is good about this facility is that it will be a living tribute to exactly what happened and you can tell a story and you will have a visual,” said Henry Robbins, treasurer of the Cedar Hill/West Bank Heritage Foundation.

It’s a story that one of the church’s former congregants, Al Beatty, spent the better part of the last 15 years of his life fighting to preserve.

Beatty helped form the Cedar Hill/West Bank Foundation in 2011 in an effort to save Reaves Chapel. By that time the church had fallen into dilapidation, its doors long since closed to a congregation that filled its pews donning their Sunday Best.

As Robbins put it, “Al had the idea some years ago of restoring the facility, but he didn’t have the finances to do it.”

So Beatty turned to the Coastal Land Trust in 2015 and, about four years later, the land trust purchased the chapel with money from the Orton Foundation, the North Carolina affiliate of The Moore Charitable Foundation, which supports cultural and historic restoration initiatives in the Cape Fear River Basin.

The project faced what seemed like a myriad of obstacles that kept both Blake and Beatty on an emotional rollercoaster-like ride with climbs of anxiety and plunges of laughter.

After the Coastal Land Trust purchased the chapel in 2019, the first of two stabilization efforts ensued. Beatty and Blake watched in agony as the chapel, by then in a significant state of disrepair, visibly shake as its steeple was removed.

The following year introduced the COVID-19 pandemic, one that ultimately shut down much of the world. Fundraising was hard to do because potential donors could not be ushered to the church. The building materials needed to restore the chapel significantly rose in both cost and demand during that time.

This all slowed the restoration process, leaving the chapel vulnerable to coastal storms and hurricanes.

“The church was degrading quickly,” Blake said. “It wouldn’t have remained standing if we’d had a big storm. It was holding on.”

All told, the project cost doubled to more than $1 million. That price tag includes the church restoration, landscaping, parking lot and detached restrooms on the property.

Blake and Beatty met at the chapel just a couple of weeks ago, near giddy as they strode into the finished product of their longtime labor of love.

Beatty will be noticeably absent at Friday’s dedication. He died Feb. 21. He was 74.

In a 2022 interview with Coastal Review, Beatty shared childhood memories of attending Reaves Chapel with his family. On Easter Sundays, he and the other children had to recite from the pulpit short speeches intertwined with scripture.

By then, the chapel had been relocated by its congregation, using logs and a team of oxen, inland on land Ed Reaves, a former Cedar Hill Plantation slave, donated to the church in 1911. The church eventually became affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal denomination and remained an AME church until its doors closed permanently in the mid-2000s.

Reaves Chapel will not be a regularly functioning church. The heritage foundation and land trust hope the chapel will become a state historic site, one that may be used by the community from time to time.

Beatty was actively planning the upcoming dedication ceremony before his death.

“Really it’s a shame,” Robbins said. “He saw the church come to the conclusion with respect to restoration, but he won’t be able to see the other side of the restoration.”

Blake said she would give anything for Beatty to be there with her Friday.

“But I know he’ll be there anyway,” she said.

The dedication will be part of a series of special events leading up to Leland’s annual North Carolina Rice Festival set for Saturday. For more information visit www.northcarolinaricefestival.org

The Reaves Chapel dedication is invitation-only. Those who would like to reserve a spot at Friday’s ceremony may email Blake at jesica@coastallandtrust.org.

Invitations will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis as limited space is available.

They did it.

The final $1 million grant the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust needs to top off the cash pot necessary to buy the undeveloped southern tip of Topsail Island has come through.

Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said he anticipates closing on the nearly 150-acre tract known as “The Point” by April.

“We’ve raised the amount of private funds that we said we needed to fund that part of the project,” Marks said during an interview Tuesday morning. “We’re waiting to hear on a final grant and hope to hear in the next few days approval of the last million-dollar grant. If that comes through, then it would appear our funding is in place and we would close on The Point.”

A few hours later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent out a press release that it is awarding a $1 million grant to the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, in partnership with the Coastal Land Trust and others, to go toward the land purchase.

Fish and Wildlife’s Tuesday afternoon announcement effectively wraps a vigorous and relatively short fundraising campaign Coastal Land Trust launched last spring after entering into a contract with the land’s owners.

In the months since, the nonprofit has received more than $1.5 million in private donations to go toward buying the land, a feat Marks said “is amazing.”

“Close to 800 people contributed,” he added.

Marks has declined to reveal the price tag of the land. He said in an interview last year that the organization expected to spend about $8 million on various expenses, surveys and title searches, and the land itself.

Michele Rivest, vice president of the grassroots organization Conserve the Point, said the pending purchase of the land, which will result in its permanent conservation, is “a dream come true.”

“It’s monumental,” she said Wednesday. “It’s the culmination of decades of effort by the community. It just speaks to the lifelong commitment of so many people who revere this very special place on the planet and have wanted to see it conserved, really left undeveloped and wild for all future generations.”

The Point includes salt flats, maritime shrub and estuarine wetlands providing habitat for federally listed species including red knots, piping plovers, green sea turtles and loggerhead sea turtles.

Conserve the Point initially formed nearly two decades ago after the property’s long-time owners put it on the market in 2005. It was around that same time the Coastal Land Trust tried to buy roughly 45 acres of the property, but a deal fell flat.

The land has been routinely on and off the market since then. Attempts to buy the land, including those by Topsail Beach to keep it free from development, did not pan out.

Efforts to keep the land development free gained traction after the CEO of a Raleigh-based software company and his wife initiated talks with the town to rezone a portion of the property from C4: Conservation – Inlet Area to conditional use. The change would have allowed the couple to build what would have eventually been a family compound, complete with about a half-dozen homes, a private marina, pool and beach and sound accesses.

Their proposal was met with fierce opposition from area property owners, regular vacationers to the town, and environmentalists who’ve enjoyed walking the shores of the land that has accreted as New Topsail Inlet migrates south.

Conserve the Point regrouped, eventually earning official nonprofit status and expanding its reach as far as 8,000 people from 15 states, Rivest said.

In November 2023, the couple withdrew their rezoning application request from the town and pulled the plug on their contract with the property owners, a move that opened negotiations between the owners and the Coastal Land Trust.

“I have to say we’re indebted to the Coastal Land Trust for getting us to the finish line here,” Rivest said. “Without their fundraising efforts and expertise I don’t think we would have made it.”

Rivest, who along with her husband splits their time living at their home in Carrboro and the house they bought in Topsail Beach roughly six years ago, said she believes Conserve the Point will maintain a role as stewards of the property.

“There’s so much more than I think there is to really share with young children and future generations about how special the planet is and this particular place is such a gift to all of North Carolina and beyond,” she said. “Thousands of people come here every year for The Point’s beauty and serenity and wildness and I think our organization and others will want to see it maintained like that. So, I think our role will evolve, but the community will continue to be very active in protecting this property.”

North Carolina is one of 11 states receiving a portion of the $25.7 million from the Fish and Wildlife Service through the National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program.

This year’s annual funding supports nearly 30 projects that will protect, restore or enhance more than 10,000 acres of coastal wetlands and adjacent upland habitats and more than eight miles of shoreline and streams.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust announced Wednesday that an additional 593 acres along the Newport River have been purchased from Weyerhaeuser Co. and transferred to North Carolina Coastal Federation for long-term management and restoration.

The Coastal Land Trust purchased the acreage in November, a tract that features estuarine marsh, managed loblolly pine forest, and bottomland hardwoods along more than 4 miles of the river and its tributaries.

The property lies within the Newport River and Black Creek Natural Heritage Area, which the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program has deemed of “very high ecological significance.”

Earlier this year: Groups conserve old Weyerhaeuser tract on Newport River

The latest acquisition is adjacent to the Coastal Federation’s 215-acre McCotter Preserve, upstream from the Coastal Land Trust’s 530-acre Newport River Marsh Preserve and close to the Croatan National Forest. It’s the second phase of a conservation partnership among the Coastal Land Trust, the Coastal Federation and the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point to protect and restore land along the Newport River.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

The first phase, completed in 2023, protected 1,436 acres just downstream from this newest conservation project, officials said.

“This conservation success and our partnership with the Coastal Federation have been critical steps forward in connecting existing conservation lands and continuing our efforts to restore significant natural habitats,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said.

The revised 2021-25 N.C. Oyster Restoration and Protection Plan, a collaborative restoration blueprint, ranks the Newport River as one of the most economically valuable and environmentally endangered oyster-growing estuaries in the state. Stormwater runoff is recognized as the largest source of coastal water quality impairment. The Coastal Federation plans to restore the natural hydrology and vegetation on portions of each protected property.

“Our close partnership with the Coastal Land Trust has provided important new opportunities for coastal restoration and conservation in North Carolina,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said. “By protecting and restoring these ecologically rich lands along the Newport River, we’re not just preserving habitat, we’re also improving the downstream water quality and fisheries of the Newport River for generations to come.”

The Coastal Land Trust cited retired N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission wildlife biologist David Allen, who said the estuarine marshes along the Newport River near the property likely hosts important habitat for many species of greatest conservation need as identified in the 2015 North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan, including diamondback terrapin, little blue heron, glossy ibis, snowy egret, tricolored heron, and American oystercatcher.

In addition, the combined 2,029 acres are militarily strategic, including transit route between U.S. Marine Corps New River Air Station and the Piney Island Bombing Target, or BT-11, and helicopter turf routes in Carteret County and a flight-holding pattern for Cherry Point.

“Conservation partnerships and projects like this one are important for both coastal resiliency and military training,” said Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Government and External Relations Carmen Lombardo of Marine Corps Installations East-Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. “We were pleased to provide Department of Defense funds toward both projects.”

Funding for the acquisition came from North Carolina Land and Water Fund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service North American Wetlands Conservation Act Grant Program, Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Integration Program, and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities Enviva Forest Conservation Fund.

Second in a series of columns on the origins of North Carolina’s natural heritage program and the statewide network of private land trusts conservancies. Read Part 1.

North Carolina’s network of private, nonprofit land conservation organizations, known as land trusts or conservancies, has collectively protected nearly half-a-million acres in hundreds of locations across the state.

These land trusts are essential partners with public agencies dedicated to natural resource conservation and environmental protection. Fifteen of these local land trusts are operated by professional staff and each have annual operating budgets of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many North Carolinians are members and financial supporters of their local land trusts, which in combination have a presence throughout the state. Many of the natural areas that have been protected by land conservation trusts are accessible and popular for public visits and enjoyment.

Additionally, land trusts have arranged conservation easement management agreements with hundreds of landowners across the state. Those easement agreements permanently assure those properties will not be intensively developed in the future and the natural resources will be carefully managed and stewarded.

Few are aware that most land trusts in North Carolina are less than 30 years old. Most were established in the short time period between 1983 to 1995.

By the early 1980s, the state’s young North Carolina Natural Heritage Program had identified and documented hundreds of natural areas as refuges of some of the state’s most imperiled biodiversity and ecological treasures.

The Nature Conservancy, having established its operations in North Carolina, pledged to focus its efforts on protecting a few dozen natural areas possessing ecological attributes of national or international significance. But as a conservationist and director of the Natural Heritage Program, I was concerned for the hundreds of other important natural areas and threatened species habitat locations in North Carolina.

Those places might not rank as having national or global ecological uniqueness and importance, but certainly their preservation was crucial to saving the diverse natural heritage assets of our state and our local communities. What would become of them? If not The Nature Conservancy, who else could and would take actions to protect those many other places?

Few local land trust organizations existed in North Carolina before the 1980s.

The local Eno River Preservation Association, formed in 1966 by visionary Margaret Nygard and her allies, focused on establishing a linear state park along that river in Durham and Orange counties.

The Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, formed in 1974 by another visionary Stan Murray with his other Appalachian Trail hiking club friends, originally focused on protecting the magnificent and ecologically-rich Roan Mountain Massif and the visual corridor of its ridgetop Appalachian Trail on the North Carolina-Tennessee state boundary.

Local, community-focused land conservation groups were scattered in a few localities, like those in Highlands, North Carolina, in the high Southern Appalachian Mountains, and also on Figure Eight Island on the Atlantic Coast.

Additionally, there had long been a history of individual visionary conservationists who had championed and organized their friends into supporting groups of advocates for the state to establish a good number of the early state parks in North Carolina such as for Hanging Rock, Pilot Mountain, Morrow Mountain, Jockeys Ridge, the New River and other parks. But while those were stellar conservation success stories, their geographic range was small and not nearly enough for what was desperately needed.

Promoting land trusts

In 1979 I authored a guidebook, “How to Form a Conservation Foundation” i.e., a land trust. At that time, North Carolina prohibited the use of the word Trust in the corporate name of any organization other than for banking and financial management institutions, this restriction was later repealed.

Those guidelines explained the benefits for forming a local or regionally focused land conservation organization, how to qualify for exemptions from federal and state income taxes, and gaining local property tax-exempt status for a public-interest charity, along with step-by-step instructions for formulating and incorporating the entity, template articles of incorporation and bylaws, and a directory to helpful references and resources.

I enrolled myself in 1982 as a charter individual member of the new national Land Trust Exchange, later renamed Land Trust Alliance. That coalition was initially formed as a means of information exchange and promotion for the relatively few local and regional land conservation organizations operating in scattered locations around the country. Most of those concentrated in the New England states, in the more populous Great Lakes coastal region, near affluent resort communities in the Northern Rocky Mountains, and on the Pacific West Coast.

In 1983, I was a member of the task force assembled by the Triangle regional council of (local) governments that designed the Triangle Land Conservancy as a regional land trust. I was inspired to form and incorporate the North Carolina Natural Heritage Foundation, or NHF, in 1984.

I envisioned that NHF could serve as a fiscal agent for the state’s Natural Heritage Program by securing needed private contributions, grants and local government contracts to help finance countywide or regional natural heritage/natural areas inventories and to finance publication of public educational guidebooks. Also, I imagined this foundation could be a vehicle to promote the establishment of other local and regional land conservancies across North Carolina.

The North Carolina State General Assembly in 1983 enacted legislation making North Carolina the first state in the nation to grant state income tax credits — dollar-for-dollar income tax reduction credits — to private landowners who donated properties or permanent conservation easements on their properties with certified natural resource assets to a qualified public agency or private land conservancy. Over time the maximum amounts of those conservation tax credits were elevated.

This incentive was a valuable means for land trusts to stimulate and induce sympathetic private landowners to willingly accept permanent easements or even to donate their properties for permanent conservation. Regardless of the success of this nationally renowned incentive that helped permanently protect 262,000 acres of North Carolina’s important environmental resources and natural areas — with an estimated foregone development value exceeding $1.6 billion — the North Carolina General Assembly’s controlling majority in 2013 terminated the program.

I authored and the Natural Heritage Program published the first edition in 1987 of the “Land Conservation Options for Natural Heritage Protection” guidebook for owners of natural areas and rural lands. The Natural Heritage Program also produced a revised edition of my original 1976 Conservation Easement guidelines for landowners, which would continue to be revised and republished over the subsequent decades.

In 1987 the state General Assembly established the North Carolina Natural Heritage Trust Fund, administered by a board of trustees appointed by the Governor, Senate President, and Speaker of the House, to award grants to state agencies to purchase natural areas and parklands.

The fund was financed by a substantial share of the State’s excise tax on land property sales and from fees on personalized vehicle license plates and their annual renewal fees. The Natural Heritage Fund provided vital financing, matched by other private funds, that produced land acquisitions and expansion of a robust network of state parks, nature preserves, wildlife management areas, state forests, coastal nature reserves over the near 22 lifespan of this important program.

Reactionary political forces gained control of the State General Assembly, which in the early 2010s terminated the Natural Heritage Fund, killed the State’s national-model Land Conservation Tax Credit program, and substantially reduced funding for the Natural Heritage Program and for most of the rest of the state’s land conservation and environmental protection programs.

Laying the groundwork

While managing the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, I organized a series of how-to instructional workshops for people interested in establishing local land trusts. Beginning in the spring of 1989 and over the next several years, the North Carolina Natural Heritage Foundation organized a series of training workshops for beginning land trusts. These assemblies of individuals involved in starting or conceiving new land trusts served to bond together a fraternity of originators of young land trusts with a sense of common purpose and shared alliance.

In the spring of 1991, I was summarily fired by administrators of the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or NCDENR, ostensibly for protesting violations of natural heritage areas conservation agreements by the US Forest Service, ending my 15-year tenure as manager of the State’s Natural Heritage Program. I won my lawsuit against the state for “wrongful dismissal” but by then had moved on in my pursuits. NCDENR is now the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The silver-lining to this episode in my life was that I was provided opportunity and incentive to reinvent myself and to reorganize and reorient the existing North Carolina Natural Heritage Foundation. With concurrence of its board of directors, I was hired in 1991 as the North Carolina Natural Heritage Foundation’s first executive director. We immediately amended our articles of incorporation and renamed the organization to become the Conservation Trust for North Carolina in early 1992.

The Conservation Trust initiated a series of meetings and instructional seminars for what by group consensus was called the North Carolina Land Trusts Network. Actively participating in these foundational dialogues in 1991-92 were representatives from a dozen young local land trusts. This informal network of regional and locally focused land conservancies reached concurrence in 1993 to form the North Carolina Land Trusts Council, which was coordinated by the Conservation Trust.

With grants received from Fred Stanback, the Blumenthal family foundation, the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, we were ready to grow the Conservation Trust to being the statewide incubator and service center for what we envisioned would become a statewide network of strong, professionally staffed private land trusts. That vision came true.

I assisted Camilla Herlevich in the 1991-93 time period in organizing and establishing the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, with both of us serving on the boards of directors of our respective organizations. Camilla retired at the end of 2020 with merited accolades for her career as founding director of that successful land trust, which has protected over 80,000 acres in North Carolina’s coastal region.

The Conservation Trust for North Carolina, or CTNC, served as the umbrella information clearinghouse and exchange, and assistance-providing service center for North Carolina’s land trusts. On behalf of that community of land trusts, CTNC moved forward to help educate the North Carolina public and decisionmakers about the growth of the land trust movement.

We explained that land trusts represented and fulfilled the concerns of people across the state who realize they could save important community green, open spaces and natural areas, valued streamways and greenways, wildlife habitats, historic and culturally treasured rural landscapes, public water supply watersheds, urban gardens and waterfronts, hiking and walking and biking trails, scenic vistas, and other important outdoor recreational areas.

We attempted to impress the public that, while national groups including The Nature Conservancy were doing important environmental protection work, North Carolina’s home-grown land trusts who focused at the “grassroots” local level merited their support to save the natural areas, green spaces, and rural landscapes most valued and beneficial to their local communities.

The 10 years from 1984 to 1995 saw the births and burgeoning growth of private land trusts across North Carolina. The most active land trusts have been the following:

• Blue Ridge Conservancy, a merger of two land trusts High Country Land Conservancy and Blue Ridge Rural Land Trust, established 1995, blueridgeconservancy.org.
• Catawba Land Conservancy established 1991, catawbalands.org.
• Conserving Carolina, a merger of two land trusts – Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy, established 1994 and Piedmont Land Conservancy, established 1990, conservingcarolina.org.
• Conservation Trust for North Carolina, established 1984 and reorganized 1992, ctnc.org.
• Eno River Preservation Association, established  1966, enoriver.org.
• Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina, established 1995, foothillsconservancy.org.
• Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust, 1883 derivation, reorganized 1992, hicashlt.org.
• Mainspring Conservation Trust, established 1999 as Nikwasi Land Trust and later named Little Tennessee Land Trust mainspringconserves.org.
• New River Conservancy, established 1974, newriverconservancy.org.
• NC Coastal Land Trust, established 1992, coastallandtrust.org.
• Piedmont Land Conservancy, established 1990, piedmontland.org.
• Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, established 1974, appalachian.org.
• Tar River Conservancy, established 1983, tarriver.org.
• Three Rivers Land Trust, a merger of Land Trust for Central NC, established 1995, and Sandhills Area Land Trust, established 1991, threeriverslandtrust.org.
• Triangle Land Conservancy, established 1983, triangleland.org.

I had the privilege of directing and growing the Conservation Trust for North Carolina for 12 years. During my tenure as its director, the Conservation Trust established and administered programs assisting and advancing the network of private land trusts, including the following:

• Annual assemblies of North Carolina’s land trusts and their allies with ongoing training, seminars, dialogues, information exchange and strengthened collaboration.
• Grant funding to land trusts for protection of streams and clean water, enabled by successive grants to CTNC from the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund and from other private sources.
• Grant funding to land trusts for farmland conservation from the North Carolina Farmland Preservation Program, for which CTNC secured original funding from the state General Assembly and was contracted by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture to administer in its initial years of operation.
• Direct financial assistance to local land trusts for their organizational development, public outreach, landowner education, land conservation planning, demonstration projects and long-range planning.
• Revolving loan program to land trusts assisting them with initial protection projects transactional costs and to match public funds for land and easement acquisitions.
• A statewide public awareness campaign to build recognition of all land trusts.
• Advocacy and lobbying for more public funding and conducive public policies for land conservation, including the state’s environmental trust funds, the state’s income tax credits to donors of land for conservation, and the One Million Acres Land Protection Land Protection goal.

I was succeeded as CTNC’s executive director in 2002 by Reid Wilson, who went on later to be appointed by Governor Roy Cooper in his first term as deputy director of the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and has been elevated to secretary of that department in the Governor’s second term.

North Carolina’s land trusts have led the way in saving many of our state’s extraordinary environmental assets and natural heritage. I subscribe to the concept, as environmental historian William Cronon well-articulated, “Land trusts are in the business not just of conserving lands, but of conserving the human values those lands embody…. We protect natural areas and open space because they stand for some of our most dearly held values.”

Every one of North Carolina’s land trust has its own creation story and account of its land conservation and community engagement successes. The success stories of each of our state’s land conservation trusts merit to be widely known and recognized.

Next in the series: North Carolina’s million acres protection goal finally achieved by end of 2020.

SOUTH RIVER — The group traipsed along a trail through the wet woods on the Lukens Island peninsula of Down East Carteret County on a cold spring morning. Three stop suddenly, as one spots a tiny, delicate flower blooming in a beam of sunlight.

“It’s a blue fringe iris,” the fellow from Marine Corps said happily, as he bent over to get a better look.

Two others in the group – a semi-retired developer from Morehead City and an attorney from New Bern – also bent down to admire nature’s hardy handiwork. All got increasingly excited as they saw more of the flowers farther along the trail that runs from the Lukens Lodge toward the headwaters of Brown’s Creek.

They also talked, almost reverently, of the deer and bear and wild turkey and great blue herons that wander through or fly over the land. They noted that there has been at least one bald eagle nest on the property, and said, with a hint of pride, that state wildlife officials had told them turkey wouldn’t live there. There are now about 150.

Mack Baker, the guy from Morehead, and John Ward, the attorney from New Bern, and their 12 partners, recently signed over the development rights to their 678-acre tract in a deal with the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, the Marine Corps, the Navy and North Carolina.Lukens Lodge, of which the fellow from Morehead and the guy from New Bern are part owners, is a truly isolated haven for hunters. But thanks to a decision by the two men and their partners, it also will be, in perpetuity, conserved in its natural state.

Carmen Lombardo, the first to spot the iris, was the point man for the project as the natural resources manager at the Corps’ air station in nearby Cherry Point. Janice Allen, the deputy director of the land trust, rounded out the group.

All are pleased because everybody wins. The land trust gets to preserve habitat and help protect water quality in the area, and the military ensures that no tall structures will ever impede flights and no residences will be built near the adjacent Piney Island Bombing Range, a key East Coast training ground. The landowners will get to keep hunting and fishing. And, of course, the irises get to keep blooming and the creatures, including alligators, which on this day went unseen like the bears and the turkeys (save a feather or two), get to keep wandering.

“We’re very proud to have completed another acquisition of development rights at Lukens Island,” Allen said. “We have completed 15 such “dual” military/conservation projects since 2006, protecting more than 7,500 acres of valuable wildlife habitat and preserving water quality while helping our local military bases.”

The property features pine and hardwood forests, sloping down to marshes along the banks of Brown’s Creek, a relatively pristine tidal stream. Lukens, actually a peninsula but so isolated it feels like an island, stretched from South River on the west to Turnagain Bay on the east. The Navy’s Piney Island Bombing Range is just across the bay. The protected land is also adjacent to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s 1,300-acre game lands that is open to the public, and it’s not far to the west of the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge.

As a result, Allen said, “the project contributes to a growing network of protected riparian areas along the Neuse River and multiple tributaries within the lower Neuse River Estuary.”

Money for the protection of this property came from a grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative.

“It’s good for everyone involved,” Ward said. “We’re very happy to have been able to do this.”

The western tip of Lukens Island looks out to South River in northern Carteret County. Photo: Brad Rich

“It lets us keep this land as it is now,” Baker added. “We won’t have to sell any of it.”

Although development has slowed dramatically in Carteret County during the Great Recession and its lingering aftermath, there have long been developers interested in the Lukens area, which, though uninhabited now, once was home to a thriving village and isn’t far, by water from the village of South River.

Some members of the partnership that owns the lodge and the land, Baker and Ward said, have at times favored selling some of the property to help pay for maintenance of the lodge and the 37 miles or roads and trails.

“If not for this (agreement), we’d probably have had to sell or develop at least some of this property,” Ward said. “It’s expensive to maintain.”

They also plant clover and other types of vegetation for the critters.  They don’t do it to shoot them. Nor really. Baker and Ward said hunters shot nine deer on the property last year. That’s far below allowed number and not even optimal for population management, according to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

“We don’t really do much hunting anymore down here anymore,” said Baker.

Most of the lodge members, who live in various parts of North Carolina and a few other states, are all-around outdoorsmen, he said. They come mainly to relax in the natural environment and look at its wonders. Some come only once or twice a year.

Ward was at one time on the board of directors of the land trust. He and Baker emphasized that hunters and fishermen care deeply about wildlife and habitat. “Ducks Unlimited was founded to preserve ducks,” Ward said.

The agreement also allows some continued “timber management” by the owners, which provides additional income. Since the land stays in private hands, it also stays on the Carteret County tax rolls.

The blue fringe iris excited visitors to Lukens Island on a cold early spring morning. Photo: Brad Rich

Allen said the land trust is particularly excited because the acquisition helps ensure the water quality in Brown’s Creek, which unlike most streams in the area has not been closed, even provisionally, for shellfish harvesting. Most of the streams in the area have been affected by agricultural development and its attendant ditching and draining, but Brown’s Creek remains almost pristine.

Allen said the land trust is “serious” about the property it manages for conservation and regularly monitors activities to make sure all provisions in the easement are being followed.

Open Grounds Farm, the sprawling 44,000 mega-farm on the north side of the Carteret peninsula, provides road access to Lukens.  On the drive through the farm, Lombardo occasionally marveled at the sights of deer, heron and huge flocks of starlings and in and above the farm fields.

“If I could make a single statement about this effort, I’d say that it perfectly serves multiple interests,” he said. “Each of the partners has its own objectives, but they overlap and mesh and make cooperation good for all.

For Cherry Point and the Marine Corps, he said, it’s crucial to keep flight paths clear around their main base in Havelock, along with their Auxiliary Outlying Landing Field at Bogue and the Piney Island Bombing Range.

Agreements like these, he said, protect national security and also enhance the environment around the bases, which is important to both people and public relations.

Allen said the whole partnership between the land trust and the military, odd as it might seem to some, dates back a long way, beginning with discussions with officials at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune about the Onslow County Bike Trail in 2001.

People got to know each other, established good personal relationships and mutual trust and respect, and found that they had common goals. Wildlife folks have learned some new things; for example, it turns out, Allen said, that even bombing on Piney Island can create habitat. Over time, bomb craters can turn into pretty good habitat for waterfowl.

The partners in the Lukens Island deal are, from left: Mack Baker, Carmen Lombardo, John Ward and Janice Allen. Photo: Brad Rich

While areas as remote as Lukens – the best way to get there is by boat – might not seem likely to be developed, she said, the same thing might reasonably have been thought years ago about areas like Bald Head Island, off the state’s southern coast and the northern Outer Banks beaches of Corolla in Currituck County, a once-remote corn of North Carolina.

Every bit the land trust and other organizations, such as the N.C. Coastal Federation, can protect, helps the environment and protects water quality in the coastal region, she said.

Since 1992, the organization, headed by Executive Director Camilla Herlevich, has helped save more than 49,000 acres of land in coastal North Carolina.

And shortly after concluding the Lukens deal, the land trust announced another conservation coup, this one at Brown’s Island, also in Down East Carteret. Herlevich said the organization had acquired more than 74 acres of Brown’s, which is just off the more familiar Harkers Island.

At more than 600 acres, Brown’s is one of the largest undeveloped coastal islands in the state still in private ownership. With this addition, the Coastal Land Trust and its partners have now protected more than 232 acres there.

“Saving Brown’s Island from development has been a top priority of those who care about our coast for many, many years—because of its size and the rich abundance of nature to be found there, including live oak and longleaf forest, forested wetlands, estuarine marsh, and coastline,” Herlevich said. “Brown’s Island is a haven for beautiful shorebirds, waterfowl, and other wildlife.

The land trust obtained a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and what Herlevich called a very generous private donation from Fred and Alice Stanback of Salisbury, a couple she called the state’s leading conservation philanthropists.

The organization doesn’t always just hold the land; sometimes it tries to do something to enhance it. For example, on that cold morning at Lukens, Allen talked excitedly about the potential for restoring some longleaf pine habitat, and Lombardo speculated about the possibility – over a long period of time – of the return of red-cockaded woodpeckers to the area.

The Lukens Cemetary helps keep alive memories of the small village that disappeared in the 1940s. Photo: Oriental Daily Photo

Historically, this woodpecker’s range extended in the southeastern United States from Florida to New Jersey and Maryland, as far west as eastern Texas and Oklahoma and inland to Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Today it is estimated that there are about 5,000 groups of red-cockaded woodpeckers, or 12,500 birds, from Florida to Virginia and west to southeast Oklahoma and eastern Texas, representing about 1 percent of the woodpecker’s original population. They have become extinct in New Jersey, Maryland, and Missouri.

Lombardo conceded that getting red-cockaded woodpeckers back to Lukens is “a long shot,” because the birds like really old forest,” and because the closest of the rare birds are pretty far away. But it’s conceivable, he said, and he and Allen think there are good opportunities for habitat enhancement in and around the conservation easement area.

Preserving Lukens is also important from a cultural standpoint, those involved noted. The area means a lot to many in Down East Carteret. In fact, each year, on a Sunday afternoon in May, a few dozen of them board a barge on the west shore of South River and go to the Lukens Cemetery.

The one-mile, 15-minute boat ride and the visit to the cemetery, which is near but not in the easement area, are part of the Annual Lukens Picnic, which has taken place for a quarter-century, a tradition that keeps alive memories of the small river town of Lukens, which disappeared in the 1940s.

Its isolation and periodic pounding by hurricanes and nor’easters led the families to leave. But many of their descendants – bearing familiar down east Carteret names like Tosto, Collins, Pittman, Hardy and Mason – still live nearby, in South River, Beaufort and Oriental, among other places. Some of their ancestors floated their homes to those new locations, others took them apart and rebuilt them in the new locales.

The cemetery is all that remains of once thriving town.