The Nature Conservancy Opens Boone Office

Will Help Focus Conservation Efforts in Northwest Mountains

DURHAM, NC — The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has opened a Boone field office, increasing its presence in northwestern North Carolina as it works to protect additional land in the area.

“The Nature Conservancy has been working in this area for more than three decades,” said TNC Northwest Mountains Protection Specialist Merrill Lynch, who will staff the new office. “Having a local office will allow us to focus our efforts more effectively as we work to build on the conservation foundation we’ve helped to create in the area.”

TNC began its local preservation work in 1975 with the purchase of Big Yellow Mountain in Avery County; TNC and the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy jointly manage that 395-acre preserve. In 1978, TNC purchased 701 acres at Bluff Mountain in Ashe County near West Jefferson. That preserve is now 1,973 acres. TNC has also been instrumental in protecting important property in Watauga County including almost 4,000 acres at Grandfather Mountain, 39 acres at Hanging Rock Ridge and over 2,274 acres at Elk Knob.

The habitat diversity of the region includes high elevation hardwood forests, spruce-fir forests remaining from the last Ice Age, endangered wetlands such as bogs, high elevation rock outcrops and boulder fields, natural grassy balds, and pristine streams and rivers. The mountains between Boone and West Jefferson are geologically unique, containing a mineral known as amphibolite. Amphibolite rock produces high pH, or basic soils that enable a very high diversity of plant species, some such as Gray’s lily are found nowhere else in the world.

The area contains significant populations of the federally endangered bog turtle and the southern Appalachian race of the Northern flying squirrel. More than 90 species of birds nest in the region including rare and declining species such as the vesper sparrow.

“Our mission is to protect the critical habitats for all of the species in the region and to link these habitats together,” said Lynch. “The challenge is to get the conservation quilt in place before development and other land use changes irrevocably fragment the natural landscape.”

Although the TNC Boone office is new, Lynch has spent much of the past 20 years working in the area, commuting from the NC Chapter’s main office in Durham.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.