At Issue: Parkway Boundary Trespasses
The park has approximately 4,000 adjacent land owners. Development of subdivisions along the Parkway is increasing rapidly, especially in agricultural lands of the Plateau and Highlands Districts, in the urban corridors of Roanoke and Asheville whose topographic features are gentle and rolling and conducive to construction, and near the resort communities of Wintergreen, Virginia and Blowing Rock, North Carolina where construction on steep slopes or otherwise atypical home sites occur.
Special use permits (SUP) issued in the 1940s and through the 1970s were often utilized to resolve errors and omissions to park deeds. Permitting those uses is now inappropriate under current National Park Service policies and guidelines. Other encroachments have been present for decades, either because they were condoned by the park or simply ignored.
Parkway staff has documented more than 400 encroachments in the form of:
- bushwhack trails from adjacent lands (100+),
- lawns and gardens (100+),
- brush piles (100+),
- private access roads (40),
- destruction of property, including trees/shrub removal (20+),
- buildings and parking areas (40+),
- erosion (averaging 3 per year),
- dumping (10+), and
- signs (25+).
In the past, park staff has provided inconsistent messages to park neighbors, and neighbors generally believe they can use park lands without incident. Park management now desires to establish a defendable policy and process that will protect park resources.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Trespasses adversely effect natural resource diversity, create vectors for exotic plants to be established, compact soils, and adversely impact park aesthetics and design standards. Visitors often get lost on unauthorized trails, not realizing they are not part of the park’s designed trail system.
Contact
Bambi Teague
828-271-4779 ext 209
bambi_teague@nps.gov
blueridgeparkway75.org
