Need to contact us?

Phone: (919) 962-2091
Fax: (919) 962-2279
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Our office is located at 210 Pittsboro Street, directly across the street from the entrance to the Carolina Inn.

tree

TOP STORY

Researchers pinpoint how trees play role in smog production

After years of scientific uncertainty and speculation, researchers at UNC show exactly how trees help create one of society’s predominant environmental and health concerns: air pollution.  The study found that isoprene, once it is chemically altered via exposure to the sun, reacts with man-made nitrogen oxides to create particulate matter. read more
Tamar Birckhead  

Tamar Birckhead can discuss the legal issues surrounding the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. find more experts

Home
UNC allocates 107 acres to N.C. Botanical Garden’s Mason Farm Biological Reserve E-mail
Monday, June 04, 2012

Chancellor Holden Thorp announced today (June 4) that 107.6 acres of environmentally sensitive land will be administered and managed by the North Carolina Botanical Garden as part of the Mason Farm Biological Reserve.

The land lies south of the botanical garden and adjoins the west side of the reserve. It is part of the Parker Property, a 126.5-acre tract conveyed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by William and Athena Parker in 1976.

The undeveloped land, which includes streams, steep hills and woods, will be added to the 367-acre reserve, an area of forests and former farm fields and pastures that is administered by the botanical garden as both a natural area and biological field station. Parker Road, off Mt. Carmel Church Road, will provide access to the property.

“The Parker Property is valuable to the community in so many ways,” Thorp said. “Under the botanical garden’s management, the land will be preserved in its undeveloped state, yet remain accessible to researchers, students and others with an interest in what it has to teach us.”

The remaining 18.9 acres of the Parker Property, in the northwest corner close to Parker Road, will remain undeveloped for the next 25 years and be maintained by the University’s grounds department. All of the Parker Property will be kept in a condition of conservation that allows the University the option to use it to offset impacts from other campus development.

The Mason Farm Biological Reserve protects natural areas, supports academic research and public education. The reserve is also home to 800 species of plants, 216 species of birds, 29 species of mammals, 28 species of fish, 28 species of reptiles, 23 species of amphibians and 67 species of butterflies. More different species of animals have been recorded at the reserve than in any other area of comparable size in the entire Piedmont.

Members of the public can get a special permit from the botanical garden for access to the reserve.

Map showing Parker Property: http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/campus/2012/parker_property_for_gordon_merklin_reduced_file_size.pdf

News Services contact: Susan Hudson, (919) 962-8415, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

CAROLINA IN THE NEWS

New study questions the value of bed rest in preventing premature birth
The Washington Post
New research is raising fresh concern that an age-old treatment for troubled pregnancies — bed rest — doesn’t seem to prevent premature birth and might even worsen that risk. ...In a separate review of past studies that failed to support bed rest, a trio of obstetricians and ethicists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill went further: They said it’s not ethical to prescribe bed rest unless the woman is enrolled in a research study.