Land conservancy buys hundreds of acres along the Cape Fear River in Lee County
About 665 acres of forests and wetlands along the Cape Fear River in Lee County will remain in their natural state after the Triangle Land Conservancy bought the property this week.
The land contains the intake for the City of Sanford’s drinking water system and is adjacent to 7,307 acres of game lands managed by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission in Lee and Chatham counties. Boaters who use the commission’s Avent Ferry boat ramp near the N.C. 42 bridge look out on the property across the river.
The land is also just downriver from Moncure, where the Vietnamese automaker VinFast plans to build an electric SUV factory that will employ 7,500 people.
The purchase is among the largest for the Triangle Land Conservancy, a land trust that has permanently protected more than 20,000 acres in the region and has eight nature preserves that are open to the public.
There are no plans yet to provide public access to the Lee County property, which the conservancy calls the Cape Fear Bottomland. The land provides important habitat for plants, birds and mammals and includes 282 acres of floodplain that will help reduce flooding downstream, said land protection manager Margaret Sands.
“At this point we’re just trying to conserve it, and then we’ll make the management plan for it,” Sands said. “There is a boat landing just across the river and so there could potentially be water access at some point.”
The Cape Fear Bottomland is the group’s first project in Lee County in several years, Sands said. Sanford resident and longtime conservancy member Tommy Frazier Bridges recently donated money so the group could devote someone to seeking potential conservation projects in the county.
“Mr. Bridges really wanted to kick-start our work in Lee County and gave a donation so that we could spend the time to try to identify some of these high-quality projects,” she said.
A forester the conservancy had previously worked with brought the property to its attention in 2020, Sands said. It was being marketed as forest land. The group struck a deal with the owner, then applied to the N.C. Land and Water Fund to cover much of the cost.
But when the General Assembly couldn’t agree on a budget, the state money wasn’t immediately available, and the owner signed a contract with a developer instead. When that deal fell through, the conservancy found a private donor who agreed to cover the full cost until the legislature replenished the Land and Water Fund.
The state fund provided $854,589 to buy an easement on the property; a private donor put up another $850,000 to complete the purchase, which closed Thursday.
This story was originally published April 7, 2022 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Land conservancy buys hundreds of acres along the Cape Fear River in Lee County."
