Balsam Mountain Trust -- Letter of Committment

Draft, 11 February, 2003 -- Please do not cite.

Elizabeth,

Our email has been down for four days so I apologize for my delayed response. Pick commented you needed a paragraph from us about our financial commitment to the USGS-SAIN proposal on letterhead and a brief summary about us. A draft of our commitment is below our introduction. Let me know when you need a final copy on letterhead.

The Balsam Mountain Trust is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization working with Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400 acre conservation-based development in Jackson County, North Carolina near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Trust exists to ensure the protection and preservation of the natural environment and cultural history of the Preserve. Real estate transfer fees fund the Trust in perpetuity with 2% of homestead sales, 1% of home sales, and 1% of resales. The Trust will be the largest landowner with a conservation easement of over 3,000 acres.

Early Trust efforts included the installation of 18 water quality monitoring stations across the Preserve for monthly data collection and analyses to obtain baseline documentation. Meanwhile, scientists from Western Carolina University, Duke, NCSU, U-T Knoxville, Appalachian State, and the University of North Alabama are conducting surveys of the flora and fauna. Rare species are GPSed and currently entered into ArcView. However, web data reporting is our goal.

Currently we serve as a demonstration site for two grants awarded to NCSU to test innovative sediment and erosion control systems to keep sediment from reaching streams and to remove deposition from streams by logging practices of former land owner Champion Paper. Champion owned this tract for almost a century just prior to our acquisition. However, Champion did not clearcut all areas so we have a protected 150 year old Northern red oak forest and an old birch forest.

An Interim Nature Center is under establishment while a permanent Nature Center should be built within the next three years. Michael Skinner became our Senior Naturalist last month to help establish the Nature Center, to coordinate curriculum development in Jackson and Haywood County public schools, and to produce newsletters and monthly natural history updates. One of our goals for the Nature Center is to offer a central data base for web reporting to encourage the local community and schools to participate in our inventory efforts. Therefore, our goals mesh with those of this proposal.

DRAFT COMMITMENT:

The Balsam Mountain Trust endorses the goals of this proposal and will match $5,000 cash along with $14,000 in-kind services.

Elizabeth, we may be able to include some of the computer equipment at the Nature Center as well. Ill talk with Pick.

Cheerio,

Cherie