Wednesday, several students and faculty members gathered outside the Park Alumni Center to protest the sale of Hofmann Forest. The forest, covering 80,000 acres in Eastern N.C., is owned by N.C. State’s College of Natural Resources and controlled by the N.C. State Natural Resource Foundation — and is thus the property of the State of North Carolina. For the past half a year, it has been slated to be sold off to a private entity, with the money to be invested in a mixed portfolio of stocks and bonds.
The Technician,too, is opposed to the sale of Hoffman Forest. As the Save Hoffman Forest campaign’s web description describes, “Not only does it provide a steady stream of revenue from timber production [it generated $1.53 million in income for the CNR in the year ending last June, and for every acre cut, an acre is planted]but it also serves as an excellent teaching tool through countless research projects and class visits that are conducted on the forest.”
The sale is motivated by large short-term profit, as compared to steady revenue. But even this profit is questionable — Is investing in the stock market a good idea? Looking back at recent U.S. history, we think not.
In any case, it is unknown what will happen to the forest once it is private hands, regardless of the assurances on the part of the CNR. We could be looking at large portions of the forest being clear-cutor slowly being sold off to developers … for Burger Kings, strip malls and subdivisions named after the missing trees.
The forest is not just an invaluable asset, but a living entity in its own right, and losing the forest could lead to environmental wreckage. It harbors the headwaters of the watersheds of the Trent, New and White Oak Rivers and is located just south of the pristine Croatan National Forest — in other words, it is right at the nucleus of the Eastern North Carolinian ecosystem.
Moreover, as noted in The News & Observer yesterday, the sale itself is a violation of the North Carolina constitution, which reads: “It shall be the policy of this State to conserve and protect its lands and waters for the benefit of all its citizenry, and to this end it shall be a proper function of the State of North Carolina and its political subdivisions to acquire and preserve park, recreational, and scenic areas.”
Based on all of this, we stand by the concerns of those who protested (for the second time) the intended sale of Hofmann Forest yesterday.
With them, our message to the Board of Trustees is to not let our lust for immediate profit rule the day. The worth of a 80,000-acre forest cannot be put in words or quantified — it is an asset, and an invaluable one at that. But in spite of that, if it is sold, the Board of Trustees and all those whohad a hand in this decision this decision will have proven to be a letdown to the N.C. State community and the entire state of North Carolina.
