Property: Has Text
From NC Bird Conservation
N
Protect the current habitat and connectivity of isolated patches through conservation ownership acquisition or easement. +
Increase connectivity among habitat patches, both through acquisition or management of adjacent stands. Preservation of large tracts of minimally disturbed older forests may be key to maintaining forest litter amphibian populations. +
Use landowner incentives to promote extending rotation lengths for timber. +
Give a high priority to protecting movement corridors that allow dispersal between habitat blocks, especially as development and roadways fragment the few remaining large tracts of habitat. Maintaining and restoring connections between habitat blocks is critical, not only for allowing adjustments in range in response to climate change, but to maintain population resilience and adaptability more generally. +
Give priority to restoring connections that are lost due to construction of four-lane highways and other roads that create nearly impassible barriers for all animals except those capable of flight. +
Direct county and state-level land use planning to minimize development within large, unfragmented tracts of forests. This would be most appropriate and effective in the regions that are, as yet, not heavily developed, including Montgomery, Stanly, Randolph and Richmond counties in the southern [[Piedmont]], and the northern tier counties of Surry, Stokes, Rockingham, Caswell, Person, and Granville. +
Concentrate planning for future infrastructure (roads, water lines, etc.) closer to existing development and avoid dissecting larger tracks of unfragmented forest. +
Make attempts to provide large core areas of forest and to connect isolated patches of forests. Cooper (2000) recommends that core areas be at least 16,000 acres in size to produce viable populations of forest-interior birds, like [[Scarlet Tanager]]. Large core areas will be important for reptiles like Eastern Box Turtle and Timber Rattlesnake, which suffer high mortality when crossing roads. +
Focus land acquisition on consolidating these areas into larger holdings so that they may be managed through fire. +
Discern and offer increased protection to specialized pocosin types. Though extensive amounts of pocosin lands are already protected, some require more protection, such as Carolina bays (Bladen Lakes area) and white cedar stands. +
Limit lakeshoredevelopment at sites where there is no protected buffer land. +
Acquire lakeshorebuffer lands (as was done at Jordan and Falls reservoirs) to exclude development. +
Implement conservation strategies where appropriate to protect downstream reaches of relic dams where there are known populations of priority mussel species. +
Land use planning and zoning laws are needed to guide development, land clearing activities, and hydrology alterations within floodplains. Planning such as this may for example route highways and other corridors that cross floodplains as closely as possible to existing corridors to avoid fragmenting an extensive corridor of forest. +
Protect existing large blocks of habitat and restoreconnections between these blocks in order to benefit the species in this group and to enhance the viability of the state's native biodiversity overall. +
Protect smaller tracts that are situated between blocks so they can function as a corridor between conservation sites. +
In the Coastal Plain, give a high priority to protecting movement corridors that allow inland migration away from inundating areas along the sounds and seacoast. +
Over the state as a whole, give a high priority to restoring connections that are lost due to construction of four-lane highways and other roads that create near-impassible barriers for all animals except those capable of flight. +
Undertake immediate and continuing efforts to limit water quality deterioration from point sources of pollution as well as nonpoint sources. In general, the most critical conservation actions necessary to sustain populations of riverine habitat species involve protection of water quality and aquatic habitats. +
Acquire additional acreage of spruce–fir habitat through purchase, conservation easement, or other perpetual management agreements (particularly in the Plott Balsams and Black/Craggy Mountains). +