Financing Land Conservation
The UNC EFC has completed several projects that help explain the cost and means of financing land conservation.

North Carolina State Agency Conservation Funding Needs Assessment

One NC Naturally, an initiative of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, produced a draft strategic plan during spring of 2003. The plan addressed three general questions relating to North Carolina conservation: What needs to be protected (and where)?; How will the protection occur (and by whom)?; and How will the additional conservation efforts be funded? This report provides some background details related to the third question: How to pay for a major conservation initiative. Specifically, it addressed:

* How much money is currently available for conservation efforts by state agencies.
* How much additional funding is needed to meet current state agency conservation goals--the gap between current and needed funding.

Exact details of necessary funding will await completion of the other aspects of the One NC Naturally Plan, but it is hoped that this preliminary report will provide sufficiently robust data to allow the search for additional funding sources to begin on sound footing.

Download the report: North Carolina State Agency Conservation Funding Needs Assessment

Download Appendix B, NC Conservation Gap Anaysis in MS Excel

Download the PowerPoint Presentation

Costs and Financing Option for the North Carolina Million Acre Initiative
January 24, 2001
Summary
Full text (820 KB; pdf)

In 2000, the N.C. General Assembly enacted a commitment to protect an additional one million acres of North Carolina as dedicated open space over a ten-year period. The UNC EFC analyzed the extent to which conservation lands are already being acquired in the state; the estimated gap in between present rates of protection and the million acre goal; the estimated costs of filling this gap, including costs to local government in potential lost tax revenue; and some of the possible financing options to pay the costs of filling this gap.

The report is by Richard Whisnant, Richard Norton and Jeremy Firestone.