ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Climate change is top of mind after extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Florence and Michael, and North Carolina's land trusts have a significant role to play.

The latest climate science – from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – underscores the importance of natural areas such as forests and working farmlands in the fight against climate change, especially in protecting those places that have the ability to absorb carbon dioxide emissions.

Elsea Brown, is director of the Blue Ridge Forever Coalition, a collective campaign led by local land trusts and national conservation organizations. The group has worked to protect more than 40,000 acres of land.

"We're kind of in a unique position in that it's our responsibility to steward and protect the natural areas that are going to allow humans to be more prepared for the effects that we are going to see," she states.

Advocates hope climate solutions will include broad involvement across for-profit, nonprofit and civil sectors.

Without major changes, IPCC scientists warn that by the end of the century the average global temperature will be around 5.8 degrees warmer with the climbing carbon footprint.

For land trusts such as the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, climate change data has helped the organization plan with a long-term lens.

"Before we started using climate change data, we were looking at what land is most important to protect today," says Michelle Pugliese, the conservancy’s land protection director.

Now, with the new data, Pugliese says the conservancy is looking at what land is most important to protect long into the future.

Scientists and advocates alike say conservation goes beyond partisan politics. Brown calls it a unifying cause.

"Conservation is really something that can bring people together,” she states. “We all care about having a healthy environment and having clean air and clean water and healthy food for ourselves and for our families. It's really not something that belongs to one party or the other."

This month, an international panel of scientists released its sixth report on climate change with data affirming that natural areas reduce our carbon footprint.


get more stories like this via email

Virginia has some of the fastest-eroding coastline in the U.S, so an effort at one federal agency is bringing new focus to the region.

Inside the Commerce Department lies NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In recent years, NOAA has designated Habitat Focus Areas in select locations around the country to attempt to restore coastal habitats.

The newest area is Virginia's Middle Peninsula, and Andrew Larkin - a senior program analyst with NOAA Fisheries in Virginia - explained why.

"The Middle Peninsula was selected because it's an area that's experiencing some impacts from climate change," said Larkin. "It's an area that's experiencing a lot of flooding, and they've seen some decline in their seafood industry."

The sudden loss of infrastructure during large storms is easy to see, with washed-out highways, rail lines and utilities. But the longer-term economic impacts of habitat loss are harder to spot.

Habitat Focus Areas help to bring resources from different levels of government to bear on problems that may be too big for local governments to handle.

Efforts to slow coastal erosion in the past were often limited to concrete or rock structures like bulkheads or riprap shorelines. In some areas of the Middle Peninsula, NOAA is stabilizing the coast using so-called "living shorelines."

Larkin described how they incorporate plants and marine life to create sustainable and stable shore conditions.

"By using things like plants or oyster structures - so we're talking marsh grass or things like oyster castles - these are concrete structures which oysters adhere to, and then the oysters provide kind of a wave break," said Larkin. "So, when you've got waves that are kind of pounding a shoreline, these will kind of break up and weaken those waves. And the plants behind them, the marsh grass, will help to trap the sediment to prevent erosion from happening."

Changes to shore ecosystems often have a direct impact on jobs connected to fishing and tourism, and communities see their tax base eroded as residents and businesses leave. So, efforts to stabilize shorelines are not only seen as helping the environment but making local communities more resilient.

Lewie Lawrence, executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission, said it's about striking a balance.

"We've got to try to figure out how do we find balance and parity," said Lawrence. "If you put too much development pressure on one side, you cause too much environmental damage. If you protect too much on one side, you're losing the ability to generate economic revenue, which is needed to make government function through tax revenue."

More information on NOAA Habitat Focus Areas is online at www.habitatblueprint.noaa.gov

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Conservation groups along several states on the East coast stretching from North Carolina to northeast Florida are working through a plan to conserve one million acres of salt marsh nearly the size of Grand Canyon National Park.

When it comes to Mother Nature, state boundaries are non-existent - so environmental groups, scientists, native communities and state and federal agencies are working together on the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative Project.

It's a voluntary, collaborative plan to help states protect channels of coastal grasslands that do more than meets the eye.

Kent Smith - a biological administrator with the Aquatic Habitat Conservation and Restoration Section of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission - said salt marshes are extremely good at sequestering carbon from the atmosphere by forming a thick peat to trap the CO2 in the sediments below.

"They also stabilize the shorelines in coast areas," said Smith. "So they keep sediments in place and they protect properties from the impacts of climate change, sea-level rise, tropical storms, things like that."

Smith said coastal development threatens the natural protections salt marshes provide, and their hope is to spread awareness so communities and developers can work together to protect these natural habitats.

Jim McCarthy - president of the North Florida Land Trust - is part of the initiative and works to buy salt marshes to preserve and protect them. He said manmade solutions to protect areas from things like storm surges don't always work.

He said one example is in Jacksonville, where marsh grasses were taken out of an area and replaced with concrete bulkheads. He said that was disastrous during Hurricane Irma.

"And as the St. Johns River turns east," said McCarthy, "it literally went over its banks because there is nothing to make the energy out of it and there is nothing to absorb it, if you will, as there would be if you had had natural marsh grasses. "

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the U.S. loses 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands, including salt marshes, each year, driven by development and sea-level rise.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

West Virginia has received federal Infrastructure Bill funding to complete the Corridor H Highway, a four-lane route beginning in Tucker County and connecting with Interstate 81 in Strasburg, Virginia.

Some environmental groups and local residents argued the project's current route could disrupt wildlife habitat and local economies based on outdoor recreation and tourism.

Hugh Rogers, board member and chair of the highways committee for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, said small towns around Blackwater Falls would feel the impact from increased traffic and congestion.

"The people on the mountain who live in Thomas and Davis, they don't want a four-lane slamming right between their towns," Rogers emphasized. "And causing a whole different kind of development probably from the kind that has been very successful."

More than 120 miles of Corridor H is now open, with around 30 miles left to complete, according to the West Virginia Department of Transportation. The state maintains the project will open up remote areas in Grant, Tucker and Hardy counties to economic development and shorten travel times through the mountains.

But Rogers countered the outdoor tourism small businesses and residents have worked to build up around Blackwater Falls is at stake. He pointed out travelers come to the area to escape major development.

"And there's just all this opportunity for recreation," Rogers explained. "As you know, mountain biking is very big around here. Lots of hiking, of course. Rafting and kayaking on the river, it's just a wonderful playground"

He added nearly 2,000 residents have signed an online petition calling for the highway's path to be diverted from the Blackwater region to an alternate route.

"For years, people thought, we have to take whatever the Department of Highways gives us; we just 'want' the changes that it will bring," Rogers noted. "Now, more and more people are getting the idea that we don't have to settle for a lousy version of this."

Research from the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance shows the highway could potentially impact threatened and endangered species such as Cheat Mountain salamander, Indiana bat, Virginia big-eared bat and West Virginia flying squirrel.