December 6, 2010
Senator Richard Burr
2000 W. First Street
Suite 508
Winston-Salem, NC 27104
Dear Senator Burr,
The Carolina Mountain Club, a hiking, trail maintaining and conservation non-profit
organization requests your support for the purchase of the French Broad River's East
Fork Headwaters tract by the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and its partner, The
Conservation Fund. Funds would be required from the federal and state level for these
two partners in order to complete the purchase. The land would ultimately be managed
for the public by the NC Wildlife Resources Commission after the purchase.
Background:
At over 8,000 acres, the East Fork Headwaters tract is the largest remaining privately owned
tract in western North Carolina, and possibly the entire southern Appalachians.
It is the last opportunity for acquisition of such a sizable and significant tract in the
southern Appalachians for public ownership ever again. The tract is bounded on its
entire southern boundary by a corridor of tens of thousands of acres of publicly
protected land. On the NC side, the tract sits mid-way between the 10,000 acre DuPont
State Forest and the 7,500 acre Gorges State Park. The property's connection to large
swaths of existing conserved land helps to create wildlife corridors crucial to species
migration and long-term survival.
“The Carolina Mountain Club strongly urges federal and state funding to enable the
purchase of the French Broad River!s East Fork Headwaters Tract, an 8,000 acre
privately-owned tract that includes over 9 miles of the Foothills Trail.”
Please support the purchase to have this natural beauty of western NC as public land.
Respectfully,
Letitia Ann Desjardins
Carolina Mountain Club
Conservation Chair