This Land, Your Land

Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer took a look at North Carolina's state parks this week and found that budget cuts mean "visitors will pay more to camp, swim or picnic" and "find fewer rangers and more peeling paint."

"The park system also will lose millions from the trust fund that has helped it grow by about 5,000 acres a year since 1996," the report says.

But, no parks have closed, despite an early proposal to close some and shorten the week at others.

State legislators cut the parks budget by 25 percent this year and took $8.4 million from the trust fund to help balance the state budget. They also shifted another $6 million from the trust fund to be spent on park operations. The latter move means the overall parks budget is effectively 5.6 percent less than last year's, Henderson said.

The trust fund is supposed to be spent on land acquisition, capital projects, major maintenance expenses and local grants. This is the first time it has been spent on operations.

Meanwhile, parks officials have continued to hold the line against charging entrance fees, which a N.C. State University study shows would not pay off anyway, the newspaper says.

The New & Observer today had a nice story about a pair of nesting bald eagles raising two chicks at Jordan Lake that are being monitored by a webcam operated by N.C. State University.

"The eaglets hatched this month, and the website has received tens of thousands of hits and about 1,500 visitors from more than a dozen countries since it was put up in December," The N&O says. "The chicks should remain on the nest until they fully develop in mid-April."

The webcam project grew from a bird-watching class field trip for an NCSU biology class.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the lake and a recreation area at the dam site, tracks eagle nests throughout the Triangle, and has been monitoring these eagles during the past several breeding seasons.

There are more than 70 breeding pairs of bald eagles in North Carolina today, including five active nests on Jordan Lake, where 32,868 acres preserved for recreation and wildlife management also include a popular state recreation area, which has five campgrounds, the underappreciated Jordan Lake Educational State Forest and state Game Lands.