The
Old Growth Forest Preserve at a Private Community near Asheville
and Burnsville, NC
When
you visit the mountaintop villages at a very special country club
with me, you will be amazed at the old growth forest the developer
of this Private master-planned community has set aside to preserve
in perpetuity.
This old growth forest looks largely as it would have 200+ years
ago before Europeans settled North America. You can almost feel
it breathe! Old growth forests are 'originals'. They are our immediate
connection to ancient history and the lessons available to us
there that we can use today. These living systems with their ongoing
cycles of birth and death and growth and decay can be deceiving
to the human eye. It may appear to us as if nothing is changing.
Yet natures countless cycles are at work from sunrise to sunset
and into the night.
What
is unique about old growth forests is that those cycles have continued
uninterrupted over a very, very, very long time!
The
great old growth forests such as the one at the private community
which must remain anonymous at this time, still have experienced
little or no direct disruption. Each forest seems to have a particular
character. Of course, the old growth forests vary in appearance
from forest type to forest type. An old-growth oak forest on a
dry ridge will differ greatly from an old-growth bottomland hardwood
forest. But there are still forests to be found all around the
USA even though less than 0.6% of the forest that remains in the
East today has not been heavily logged or grazed, and forest types
attractive to loggers may now be numbered only in the hundreds
of acres.
Many
clients are interested in setting aside preserves, something I
specialize in and encourage (--my clients have set aside in preserves
or private family holdings hundreds of acres and numerous waterfalls!---
click HERE
or HERE
to see a couple now available for you to preserve as land legacies:
Clients ask
me if the remaining old-growth forests are protected. My answer
is that at least 50% of the remaining old growth is still in private
hands or controlled by agencies that may log them. Logging of
old growth buffer zones can create the incursion of non-native
species and damage the old growth forest. Old-growth forests have
been characterized as "the key" to biodiversity. The
invaluable roles they play include making unique contributions
to the gene pool; harboring native species; demonstrating natural
processes; and serving as cores for future large wilderness areas
and as nodes of biodiversity.
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