The Preservation of Hofmann Forest

Essay by Wulf2012College, UndergraduateA, September 2014

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Charles Ramsey 1

The Preservation of Hofmann Forest

Charles Ramsey

Comm/215

Sept. 22, 2014

Margaret Mehl

The Preservation of Hofmann Forest

There is a plan for sale of Hofmann Forest, owned by North Carolina State University, which has been circulating for about eighteen months now. The first drafts of such a plan were leaked and inflamed those in opposition of the sale, containing information about potential commercial development. What all this means is that even though NCSU is looking to gain a large sum of money for the sale of their forest, which they already have revenue from through various means, they should consider putting the sale on hold so the forest can be preserved properly, with measures such as a written statement of easement.

North Carolina State University first put together the Hofmann Forest in 1934, while the late Julius Hofmann was dean of the then-College of Forestry.

It has been used for forestry research for the past decades since then, and, according to "Newsobserver.com" (2014), is even currently used by the nearby Camp Lejeune Marine base for aerial operations training (para. 9). Currently, the university also gets revenue from the forest by means of sustainable forestry operations. This means they are harvesting wood at a safe rate, and processing it, selling the timber, and replanting as they harvest. So that brings me to ask, why sell Hofmann Forest and it's revenue, including both the deal with Camp Lejeune and the sustainable forestry operations?

The university has chosen to sell the 79,000 acre forest for a sum of $150 million, to what is now two groups, one Hofmann Forest LLC, who had plans in their preliminary report to turn the forest in commercially developed land, touting the high quality of the soil if the trees were to be...