This Land, Your Land

The North Carolina Nature Conservancy on Friday announced the acquisition of a 1,263-acre Cumberland County tract that will eventually become a part of Carvers Creek Sandhills State Park.

The parcel includes a critical block of longleaf pine ecosystem at the eastern edge of the Sandhills. It shares a 2.5-mile border with Fort Bragg and a 2-mile border with Carvers Creek Sandhills.

"This truly is a keystone tract in every sense of that word," said Conservancy Conservation Director Rick Studenmund. "Several clusters of endangered red-cockaded woodpeckers nest on the property. It contains the headwaters of Carvers Creek and includes extensive forested wetlands."

Though development of Carvers Creek Sandhills, North Carolina's 38th state park, is "very much in a holding pattern," the Division of Parks and Recreation is writing a master plan for the park, spokesman Charlie Peek told The Fayetteville Observer in August.

In 2001, the Conservancy bought 1,173 acres in the area, which formed the core of Carvers Creek Sandhills. In 2004, James Stillman Rockefeller bequeathed the 1,435-acre Long Valley Farm to the Conservancy; that property will also be transferred to the state park system.