- [Anita] Coming up on "ncIMPACT."

North Carolina is growing quickly.

We'll find out how communities are balancing population growth with conserving their landscape.

This is "ncIMPACT."

- [Announcer] "ncIMPACT" is a PBS North Carolina Production in Association with the University of North Carolina School of Government.

Funding for "ncIMPACT" is made possible by- - [Announcer] Changing the course of people's lives.

That's the impact UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine work to deliver every day.

Our 40,000 team members across the state of North Carolina are committed to caring for you, our patients and communities, as well as educating the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Individually, we can do a little, but collectively we can do a lot to create impact.

- Welcome to "ncIMPACT," I'm Anita Brown-Graham.

North Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the nation.

Population growth can be good for a state's economy, but it can also cause a burden for the state's natural resources.

"ncIMPACT's" David Hurst joins us with insight on how the next generation of our state's leaders is investing in conservation.

- Anita, development is moving at an extremely high pace as more and more people move to North Carolina.

That means we're losing farms, forest waterways and wildlife to development, all things that are crucial to our survival.

Future leaders are taking note of this and working to make a difference.

- All right, I got a delivery, y'all.

- [David] Amarion Singletary knows what it's like to get into the weeds.

- This is our future that we have to be concerned about.

All right, y'all all clear?

- [David] And when it comes to the future of our planet, details matter.

- All resources are becoming more limited day by day.

- [David] The Rising Junior at Garner Magnet High has a passion for learning about the value of our natural resources, and how to best conserve them in the midst of growing development.

- If we are more educated, we can definitely strive for a better future.

You're good right there.

All right.

- [David] Singletary is just one of a handful of North Carolina high school students looking to pursue a career focused on protecting our state's natural resources.

- I think it'll always remain a challenge, because you're always gonna have more influx of people, and you're always gonna have a limited amount of space.

So I think it'll always be a challenge.

Will it always get better?

I think, yes, we're continuing to make strides to get this better.

- [David] Farms, forests and other natural lands are vital to the state's economy and wellbeing of its residents.

But housing, roads and other infrastructure are often developed in their place.

In fact, more than 2 million acres of these natural lands have a high probability of development in the next 30 years.

That's according to projections from RTI International.

- Housing and Conservation can coexist, and we are careful with where we are plotting new homes and where we are deciding, no, we cannot touch that area, and we cannot start knocking down trees, removing the natural habitats that our animals are living in.

We just have to find the right balance of that problem that we are currently having in North Carolina.

Oh, thank you.

- [David] And Singletary says he's optimistic his generation will find that right balance, especially after working with other students who also share his passion.

- The more people we are educating the more people we are getting involved, the more people we are including like from different backgrounds of the state, I believe the future's in the right hands of the newer generation.

- Both Singletary and Medlin attended a statewide conservation camp this past summer.

They joined more than 100 North Carolina high school students who were interested in pursuing careers focused on protecting our state's, farms, forest, waterways, and wildlife.

- Thank you David.

Joining me now is Manley Fuller.

Manley is the Vice President of Conservation Policy at the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

Manley, thanks so much for being with us.

- Thank you.

- Help us to level set here.

What kind of impacts are our population growth and resulting land development having on our state's natural landscape?

- They're significant impacts in different regions of state which is experiencing high growth.

The Piedmont region, of course there's the coastal, plain and mountains are all experiencing a lot of population growth and development.

- You all have been getting people to pay attention to this issue.

Talk to us a little bit about how you're doing that.

What are some of the challenges in getting people to realize this is an issue?

- Well, if you look across North Carolina and across the nation, the public is very supportive of conservation lands programs and there's a nexus to that makes sense to invest more money in protecting our natural environment when we're experiencing increased growth pressure.

- So let's talk about what's at stake here.

If we don't pay attention to conservation now, what does that say for the future of our communities?

- Well, if we don't pay attention to it we have less places for the public to enjoy the outdoors, experience it in all sorts of different ways, sustainable manner.

And also we lose diversity, and we lose fish and wildlife habitat.

- Thank you so much, Manley.

Stick around, we'll come back to you in our round table.

A flood of historic proportions is now clearing the way for a conservation project in one eastern North Carolina community.

"ncIMPACT's" Sloane Heffernan shows us how leaders in Jones County are working together to repurpose property badly damaged by Hurricane Florence.

- Hurricane Florence ravaged Jones County back in 2018.

The community is now hoping to turn one flooded property into a place the entire community can enjoy.

- This is my key.

- [Sloane] This rundown school building may not look like it has much of a future, but it holds a lot of history.

- Well, it was built in 1951, as the African American high school here in the county when there was segregation in the South.

- Some of that history was washed away in 2018, when rising waters from the nearby Trent River rushed through these halls flooding the school during Hurricane Florence.

- So you can see how high the water came up in 2018 with Florence, about 18 inches we figure in this room - [Sloane] After the water receded, vandals came in and caused even more damage.

Time has stood still since then.

Even the massive sink hole in the road beside the school has never been touched.

But county leaders say they have a new plan they hope will pave the way for a brighter future.

- It would be nice to make something outta this facility and that would help all the citizens of the community.

- [Sloane] Jones County leaders partnered with ECU to conduct a comprehensive study on the 25 acre school site.

- We really wanna find out what the people who live there want and what they need.

- [Sloane] Dr. Deb Jordan, head of the ECU Department of Recreation Sciences, spent a year doing research and created the Jones County Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

The plan calls for the school site to be transformed into a destination park with walking trails, playgrounds, picnic areas, and multi-use sports fields.

- It's wiser to use that space as park, than it is to build another building there, because the next time a hurricane or a major storm comes through, it could very well destroy any structures again.

- Dr. Jordan says conserving green space is important because it is so limited.

- Particularly in Eastern North Carolina where poverty is an issue where we have a lot of open space but it's not very high quality.

There's no real maintenance for it.

People can't really use that kind of space, which is a shame.

- [Sloane] The county plans to demolish part of the school building and renovate the rest.

They hope to create the county's first ever wellness and recreation center.

- This school is really has a big presence in the community just because of its historical value and presence.

And it just lends itself to be such a great space for future generations to come and be able to gather and take part of those recreation programs.

- A school that once represented division may soon become a gathering space for everyone.

The county applied for two grants to cover the cost of the project.

The county is hoping to begin construction on the Wellness and Recreation Center later this year.

- Thank you so much, Sloane.

Joining me now is Marlena Byrne.

Marlena is North Carolina's Deputy Chief Resilience Officer.

Marlena, we saw in that story a crucial intersection of land conservation and climate resilience.

What role does your office play in these kinds of efforts?

- So thank you for having me.

We play a couple of different roles actually in these kind of situations.

First of all, we have our buyouts program.

We have the kind of recovery end of our house in the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

And through that we do completely voluntary, but state sponsored buyouts, where we buy out property that's in the 100 year floodplain, that's at severe threat of repetitive loss from storms.

And we turn that land over to cities and counties so that they own it and they can use it for recreation purposes, for flood control purposes, for whatever they deem to be the best use of that property in the future, but it gets housing and other uses out of the floodplain.

The second role that our office plays is that we have an advocacy role through our Office of Resiliency, which I'm part of that resilience team.

We advocate for more funding for the Land and Water Trust Fund, the Parks and Recreation Fund as you heard mentioned earlier in the program.

We also work closely with the Governor's office and our state legislature on advocating for legislative changes that will support conservation.

- Yeah, and I just wanna say you have the coolest job title ever.

- [laughing] Thank you.

- What other examples across the state do you have of communities that are rebuilding smarter and stronger in the face of future natural disasters?

- Yeah, so it was great to see that clip of the project on the Trent River because we are actually working closely with another community on the Trent River.

We have partnered with North Carolina State University's Coastal Dynamics Design Lab.

Wanted to get that name right, the CDDL program there, which is part of their landscape architecture program.

And we are working on some really great planning projects, which all started in the city or the town rather of Pollocksville, which is also on the Trent River.

They have suffered severe loss and damage in Hurricane Florence.

Two thirds of their commercial buildings were inundated.

They lost dozens of homes.

They're trying to figure out how to rebuild more resiliently from that.

And they have just adopted what they're calling a flood print.

This is through partnership with NC State's program, where they have done some really great planning for their waterfront, what to do with these lands after they're bought out by the state so they don't just turn into a blight, but are really turned into an asset for the community.

- I love that we're no strangers to hurricanes for sure, but it's wonderful to see some good things come out of the rebuilding.

Stick with us for a second, Marlena.

We're gonna watch another piece and then we'll come back to our round table.

2023 is the Year of the Trail in North Carolina.

The goal is to celebrate our state's vast network of trails, greenways, and blueways.

"ncIMPACT's" Evan Howell visited a town outside of Charlotte that is using trails and green space to give their community a makeover?

- [Evan] When Betty Flohr and her husband first arrived in Lincolnton, she got the feeling it wasn't exactly bustling.

- Cars still parked at an angle, which was always a little weird for me, 'cause I thought, what kind of small town have I come to?

An Andy Griffith kind of place.

- [Evan] Flohr, joined the Downtown Business Association and committed herself to growing the downtown area.

She also got involved in the discussion on how to make the town a destination for leisure and entertainment.

- When people come down here to walk and while they're here they're not just gonna walk, they're gonna come downtown to see what's here.

You know, they're gonna maybe get a cup of coffee maybe get some lunch, you know they're gonna have a cold beer, a glass of wine, shop, go visit some type of event at the Cultural center, the citizen center.

They're gonna make it a day event.

- [Evan] The decision was made to collaborate with the Carolina Thread Trail, a network of trails and greenways across the region, spanning 300 miles across 15 counties.

The regional initiative is designed not just to have communities aligned with a master plan, but to have them collaborate and connect with each other.

- People are choosing where they live based on the quality of life that they can experience there.

It's not just about, they have to go somewhere for their job.

They're gonna choose a city, a job here or there based on what kind of life they can have in that place.

- [Evan] It's all part of a planning trend among communities to take a look at green spaces and habitat protection as factors that not only make them livable, but draw visitors looking to relax and in turn bring dollars to downtown.

- It's just a great draw for people.

It's a great enjoyment for people of all ages.

And that's what we want the city Lincolnton to be is a great place for people to live and enjoy.

- [Evan] A key aim of this initiative is to expand the network to 1600 miles.

With that kind of growth, careful stewardship is also needed to reduce erosion and protect species already living along the trail.

- So I hope to inform the process to ensure that when the trail is located, it's done in a way that's sensitive to the natural environment and allows the public to enjoy the outdoors while not harming the outdoors.

- [Evan] Flohrs says she's thankful to see this new marriage of progress in nature.

She's opened to second business and looks forward to her new visitors and new customers.

- Because people like to do outdoor things.

And if there's activities where they can do them or a place where they can go do that makes it all beneficial to visit Lincolnton.

Why not?

- [Evan] Thanks to input from high school students.

Plans are now underway to build an amphitheater and recreation area downtown on the trail, leaving local leaders energized as they continue to plan for their future growth and development.

For "ncIMPACT," I'm Evan Howell.

- Thank you, Evan.

It was great to see so many people working together around those conservation issues.

Let's bring back our experts now, and joining us for our round table is Jesalyn Keziah.

Jesalyn is the Community Engagement Program Officer at the UNC American Indian Center.

Jesalyn, this conversation about conservation.

Try not to say that too fast, it's personal for you.

Help us understand the importance of amplifying Native community voices in the conservation conversation.

- Thank you so much, Anita, and I'm really honored to be able to be here and speak about this and for the trust of my community to have me here speaking.

So I'm a member of the Lumbee Tribe, serve at the American Indian Center and also serve as the Vice President of Triangle Native American Society.

For our communities, this is a huge conversation.

So you can't speak about land, you can't speak about conservation without speaking about Indigenous people.

We are the land, we are connected to this land.

My family has been here for thousands and thousands of years, right?

So anytime we're speaking about the land and the natural resources of North Carolina, it's important that we include Native voices in that conversation.

So right now we're in a really incredible moment where we're recognizing the rights and the sovereignty of our tribal nations.

We have eight tribal nations in the state, four urban Indian organizations who should be in these conversations, and we're seeing more and more examples of that inclusion.

This is a historic time in righting that balance.

And we also know that our Indigenous people have the most knowledge of this land, the memory, the history, the understanding of these natural systems that are in place and how to be most resilient facing the challenges that we're facing today with climate change, with environmental destruction, with finding ways to balance and honor our natural resources here.

We know that's what makes North Carolina so special, and our Indigenous people are closest to the wisdom of keeping these systems alive and in balance.

- Marlena, let me ask you to weigh in here.

As your office is gathering community, how do you ensure that all the stakeholder voices are at the table?

- You know, it's really hard work, and it takes a lot of time to do that.

And that is not something that we take lightly.

When I mentioned before that we were working to develop more flood prints for the other communities that have been impacted by storms in the recent years in our work with the North Carolina State University program.

One of the ones that we're doing is partnering with the Coharie Indian tribe to work with them on a flood print.

So I think that kind of direct involvement of communities in community driven planning for these lands that we've bought out is incredibly important.

That's just one example of the kind of stakeholder outreach and community involvement that we're trying to bring in.

But there's always more work to be done.

This land was indigenous land long before it was part of the state of North Carolina.

And that impact is very deep here in North Carolina.

- Marlena, I wanna ask you to build on that.

Obviously we're very interested on this program about collaborations, and Land For Tomorrow is a coalition of organizations, but also of other coalitions.

How do you bring all the right people to the table?

- In my other hat I should mention, I'm actually on the board of Triangle Land Conservancy.

So I have sort of two different ways that I approach these issues.

And it's hard work.

As a state we have a mandate to be transparent.

We need to bring in all the communities.

That is something that I think we're constantly working on developing and doing a better job of.

I know that we have a lot of like public outreach forums.

We partner with various members of the community.

We try to reach out not just to representatives of local government.

That's always very important part of the work we do, but also partner with nonprofit organizations and community leaders who are really outside of the standard government structures.

We have a program that we've developed we call it RISE, Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environments where we are working on building local capacity for this kind of resilience planning, one aspect of which is land conservation.

And through that program we've worked with local leaders in the communities who are not actually in government, but are kind of providing these other access points to community voices for us.

- Excellent.

Manley, do you have something to weigh in on this conversation about partnerships?

Obviously you've been doing it for a while.

- Well, actually today I'm at a meeting of a partnership gathering about the National Forest and mountains in Ashville, But the North Carolina Wildlife Federation works in collaboration with literally several hundred organizations around the state, and we're building other partnerships, and we have a chapter program across the state, which is growing.

Each of those chapters is doing a lot of outreach to protect really important conservation assets in different regions of the state.

That's a partial answer to your question.

- So Jesalyn, often people mistake conservation for a synonym for taking land out of the economy.

Talk to us a little bit about how conservation efforts support the economy.

- Yeah, so this is a really interesting question and intersection for me.

So I started my professional career working in the conservation and environmental world, and working now in community spaces.

I think there's ways for pathways of sustainable economic development that honors and builds on our natural resources.

And so a few examples that I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of the Great Coharie River Initiative that Marlena mentioned.

So the Coharie tribe took it upon themselves to clean out over a hundred miles of the great Coharie River, which flows into the Black River where we have the oldest cypress trees, he Three Sisters, and then down into the Cape Fear.

So we know this is also an area that's really impacted by hurricanes.

And so not only has their work had this huge environmental impact, but also created economic development opportunities for their community to do storm mitigation efforts, to be trained in those skills.

And now they're leading projects elsewhere.

It's also created a tourism economy, a really sustainable tourism economy where they're leading folks down the river and opening possibilities for young folks to open small businesses around all of those efforts.

And so that's provided a model that we're all learning from, and seeing other communities learn from, what's possible when we do honor our natural resources and work with them in a way that also helps our economic economic development.

- So I wanna go back to the very beginning of the program when we saw some next generation leaders talking about how hard things will continue to be because we'll continue to grow, but that they were optimistic.

They thought things would get better in terms of balancing development and conservation.

What makes you optimistic, Marlena?

- Well, there's a few things that are making me optimistic right now.

I think there's a lot more focus on these issues now.

I think that we have come out of these real tragedies of Hurricane Florence and Matthew, and more recently Tropical Storm Fred.

These major climate disasters with a renewed interest, I think, and a real focus on how do we get people out of dangerous places, and how do we make those places actually work for the community.

And a lot of those areas are places that can work really well as recreation areas.

They can be water storage areas.

They can allow for us to return water to the land.

I think that there's a lot of opportunity here now.

I think also Northline is really beginning to see the impact of the recent increases in the federal budget for land conservation.

We were able to greatly increase our funding for the Land and Water fund, which goes directly to conservation program programs in the state.

So I think that there's a lot of reason for optimism.

I think also that the younger generation has really focused on issues of the environment, how important land use is to that.

Conservation really is one of the biggest things we can do in the state and in the world to battle climate change.

It provides both for reducing our emissions, but it also provides for these great places where we can protect habitats, have recreational opportunities and really protect communities.

- Wow, well, a moment of inspiration for all of us.

Thank you for joining us and for the important work you're doing throughout the state of North Carolina.

And I wanna thank the local leaders who are featured in this episode.

We don't take for granted that they have generously allowed us to share the inspirational stories of how they are working with others.

Of course, you know we never end this program without thanking you, our amazing audience, for watching and engaging.

You know solutions are out there if we work together.

We want you to tell us what your community is doing or how we can help you.

You can email us at ncimpact@unc.edu or send a message on Twitter or Facebook, and be sure to join us every Friday night at 7:30 on PBS North Carolina for new episodes of "ncIMPACT."

Coming up on "ncIMPACT."

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We'll take a look at what's being done to improve care and support caregivers.

[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ - [Announcer] "ncIMPACT" is a PBS North Carolina Production in association with the University of North Carolina School of Government.

Funding for "ncIMPACT" is made possible by- - [Announcer] Changing the course of people's lives.

That's the impact UNC Health and the UNC School of Medicine work to deliver every day.

Our 40,000 team members across the state of North Carolina are committed to caring for you, our patients and communities, as well as educating the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Individually, we can do a little, but collectively we can do a lot to create impact.