VOLUME 11 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2011
SAFE SKIES & SAVING HABITAT Room to Roam
A Record of Success
Everyone knows that wildlife needs safe places to raise their young, and places to find food and water. Large animals may need hundreds of acres to range and roam, and even small ones, like butterflies, birds and fish, may travel great distances to places that meet their specialized needs.
Since 1996, the Coastal Land Trust and the Marine Corps have completed twelve acquisitions of land or restrictive easements – including the property owned by the Henry family – that will protect either Cherry Point or Camp Lejeune, securing almost 6,600 acres in Craven, Carteret, and Onslow Counties. Parcels protected include tracts beneath practice flyways, within noise buffers, near bombing ranges, and adjoining the main gate of the Air Station at Cherry Point and parts of the Base Camp at Camp Lejeune. Habitat protected includes river marsh, longleaf pine flatwoods, riverine swamp forest, and headwaters of freshwater creeks. The partners have brought more than $24 million in capital grants for land acquisition to the region, from the Department of Defense, from the NC Clean Water Management Trust Fund, and from philanthropists Fred and Alice Stanback.
The same concept applies to people, too. We all need safe places to raise our families and places to get outdoors and enjoy nature. Sometimes people, too, have specialized needs for lots of land. For example, the pilots being trained at coastal North Carolina’s military bases need great swaths of undeveloped land to fly over as part of their practice runs. In fact, development that encircles military bases is much more than an inconvenience; it can restrict training and testing to such an extent that training success and the safety of soldiers and civilians could become compromised. Fortunately, all across the country, land trusts are partnering with the military to protect special places that protect wildlife while also helping the military create a safe environment for training our soldiers. The Coastal Land Trust has joined forces with the US Marine Corps, saving land for wildlife and for pilots and soldiers.
The Jobs Bonus If our military bases keep their flyways and training grounds protected, they can compete more successfully for new units to be deployed there. That means jobs for eastern North Carolina. And that’s exactly what is happening as a result of the partnership between the US Marine Corps and the Coastal Land Trust. In December, the Navy announced its decision to base 8 squadrons of the new F-35B Joint Strike Fighters – 128 planes plus the 1,194 military personnel to go with them – at Cherry Point. Thousands of civilian and construction jobs will also follow. This “jobs bonus” has captured the attention of both Progress Energy and Golden LEAF Foundation, which have provided generous support to the Coastal Land Trust to carry out our work.
Great Partners: the Marine Corps and the Coastal Land Trust
If our military bases keep their flyways & training grounds protected, they can compete more successfully for new units to be deployed there.
Partnering for Wildlife Craven and Carteret Counties end in a peninsula that reaches into Pamlico Sound. There, for generations, watermen have plied their open boats, living off the fish and shellfish. Hunters are drawn by abundant ducks and other wildlife. Except for large-scale farming operations, much of the region remains “undiscovered” and is a haven for wildlife.
Partnering for Soldiers
This area is important to the military, too. Dave Plummer, a Regional Airspace Coordinator for the Marine Corps, notes that many of the parcels in the region “are critical because they exist under restricted airspace along a delta that enables high speed, low altitude target run-ins to the Air Station at Cherry Point.” The Henry family owns land there – a mosaic of woodland, marsh and waterfront along Turnagain Bay. “The airplanes fly so low that the pilots wave to me from their window,” says Lacy Henry. Not surprisingly, his family’s land is among the parcels that the Coastal Land Trust and the Marine Corps identified as priorities for acquisition.
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