Despite the huge amount of federally protected land in Western North Carolina, we are losing forestland. In the first of a two-part series, we look at our disappearing forests and the causes behind it. Next week: solving the problem and reversing the trend.

The four counties of Jackson, Macon, Swain and Haywood are losing forested land to development significantly faster than the rest of Western North Carolina and faster than the rest of the state, according to a new 12-year inventory conducted by the U.S. Forest Service.

Unlike the massive clear-cutting of the region in the early 1900s by logging companies, forestland is being lost to development, limiting hopes of future regeneration of the forest.

“When you get a paved driveway and a house on a property, that’s pretty permanent,” said Dennis Desmond with the Franklin-based Land Trust for the Little Tennessee. If forest loss continues at the current rate and is not replenished, these four counties will have no forest other than protected national forest lands within 200 years.

“The question is, how much longer can this go on before we lose the critical mass of forest?” asked Dr. Peter Bates, a Western Carolina University professor of forestry and natural resources.

Forested land is at its lowest level since the forest service began inventories in 1938.

For decades, environmentalists concerned about forest lost have been confronted with the prickly fact that more forest exists today than during the height of the logging boom 80 years ago. But no longer. The new inventory shows that forest loss today rivals that of the 1930s, but more worrisome is the permanence of today’s loss.

The development razing the region’s forested land is being driven partly by seasonal homes and land buy-ups by people who don’t live here, according to the “Conservation Assessment and Strategy” report just released by the Land Trust of the Little Tennessee. Nearly half the property parcels in Jackson and Macon counties are owned by people who claim permanent residence elsewhere — 49 and 48 percent, respectively, of property tax bills are sent to out-of-county owners.

Bobby McMahon has had a bird’s eye view of forest loss in the region during 22 years in the Jackson County mapping office. Every eight to 10 years, a new set of aerial photos of the county is taken. The maps reinforced what he saw driving to work each day.

“Obviously, me being native, you see mountainsides where once it was pristine and barren of any kind of structure. You saw a lot of hilltops and mountainsides that had nothing but trees on them,” McMahon said. “Now you see road networks and structures and buildings going up. I can only anticipate what the next flights will show next year.”

New home construction dramatically outpaced population growth between 1960 and 2000, confirming that the homes being built don’t have year-round residents to go with them. In that 40-year period in Jackson, Haywood, Macon and Swain, the number of new homes increased 3.5 times greater than population growth, 335 percent versus 77 percent respectively, according to the regional analysis by the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee.

And the interest in mountain real estate just keeps growing, McMahon said.

“We’ve always had a heavy percentage of absentee ownership, particularly in the southern end of our county in the Cashiers area. Over time, that has spread throughout the county,” McMahon said. “A lot of those owners used to be from Florida, most of them were in their 70s and 80s. That trend has changed over the last 10 years.”

Now, people are buying second homes at 50 or younger and are from all over — Atlanta to the Midwest. In the Wall Street Journal travel section any given week, only Florida has more real estate advertisements than North Carolina.

Desmond said the link between forest loss and real estate purchases by part-time residents or developers is clear. Buyers of second-homes and investment properties are the biggest factor driving up property values. Increased property values are the biggest factor tempting long-time landowners and farmers to sell out.

This correlation, driven by market forces on the surface, is affecting ideology, according to the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee analysis, which explores sociological, economic and historical factors and how those are affecting the region’s ecology.

While forests are falling to second homes, the owners of those homes hold more biocentric views of the forest rather than anthrocentric views, valuing scenic beauty and nature for nature’s sake over commodity and wood production.

“This reflects a more residential, non-utilitarian focus of the mountain region’s increasing number of absentee and second homeowners,” the report states.

As a result, marketable timber is becoming more of a by-product and not the impetus behind some of the logging trucks seen traveling down the roads in the region. Developers log land before putting in a subdivision, and sell the timber while they’re at it. Timber harvested in this manner won’t regenerate, and that concerns the timber industry as much as environmentalists.

“It is a huge concern for us, any loss of land base converted to another use,” said Jack Swanner, general manager of T&S Hardwoods in Jackson County. T&S employs 80 people and exports wood to 19 countries.

“If you look at what used to be here, land was owned by farmers and farmers looked at timber as another crop, only the rotations were over a lot longer period of time than say, tobacco. But you always knew that farmer would manage that land and that he would eventually harvest,” Swanner said.

Swanner doesn’t have to look far for an example. A stone’s throw from the lumber yard is Balsam Mountain Preserve. For 97 years, the 4,000-acre tract was owned by Champion Paper. While the land was clear-cut during early logging years, for the past several decades, harvests were done regularly and sustainable on a rotating basis. Meanwhile, locals were able to hunt, fish, hike and camp, Swanner said.

While it’s commendable that a majority of the 4,000-acre development and its native flora and fauna is going to be preserved, it will be preserved for the exclusive use of 330 wealthy families in the market for second or even third and fourth homes.

“We will harvest from the house sites, but then we won’t get that timber anymore. We are losing these large tracts of land,” Swanner said.

Swanner said he can’t afford to be anti-development — he logs tracts slated for development, mills the lumber and sells it back in the form of 2-by-4s and hardwood floors — but it is not a sustainable course, he said.

Environmentalists and loggers don’t make such strange bedfellows these days, according to Bates.

“People who are traditionally enemies who have been at each other’s throats for years now are coming together and realizing there is a greater threat, and not to name any villains, the threat simply being the permanent loss of forest to development,” said Bates. “Whether you are a timber company or the most ardent environmentalist, you both want healthy forests to survive in the future.”

WNC’s residents aren’t alone. A public opinion poll conducted jointly by Democratic and Republican polling firms in 48 states this month concluded that 39 percent of the country felt their community was growing too fast. The Charlotte/Mecklenburg County area lost 35 percent of its forests between 1990 and 2002, compared to the 5.8 percent lost here.

In today’s equation, who to blame is not clear — the people moving here and starting families, those buying second-homes, the developers, the Realtors, the old Appalachian families selling their land?

“There’s not a villain,” Desmond said. “It is not a conscious, concerted thing. People are realizing the beauty and resources that are here. We’re more loving it to death.”