Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 20, 1990 TAG: 9004200200
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: MARGIE FISHER RICHMOND BUREAU
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The tract on Sapling Ridge near the West Virginia border was purchased from the family of McChesney Goodall of Charlottesville for $81,000, said George Fenwick, director of the Nature Conservancy in Virginia.
Through a program established by the 1988 General Assembly, the state will take over the land for about $60,000 - or three quarters of its cost - and it will be managed and protected as a nature preserve by the Virginia's Department of Conservation and Recreation.
The Sapling Ridge purchase is the 10th in Virginia since the state set up the partnership program two years ago with the Nature Conservancy, which is a private, international non-profit organization dedicated to identifying and protecting ecologically significant land and the plant and animal life it supports.
The state provides $1.5 million every two years for purchases while the conservancy provides $500,000 and acts as the state's agent in arranging the buys.
At a news conference Thursday, Secretary of Natural Resources Elizabeth Haskell called the program "a wonderful example of public and private cooperation in protecting wild things."
Fenwick called the Sapling Ridge purchase "a bargain sale." He described Highland County, which some call "Little Switzerland," as one of the most beautiful in the state. "To see it is to want to be there," he said.
Fenwick said he expects the county's property values will rise sharply in the next several years as flatlanders come to see it as an ideal spot for mountain retreats and vacation homes.
Fenwick said the Nature Conservancy was "really acting on a closing window of opportunity" in acquiring Sapling Ridge, which is one of Virginia's few remaining red spruce forests - more common in Northern climates - and home to the endangered northern flying squirrel.
According to Michael Lipford, director of the Natural Heritage Division of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, "probably the whole Blue Ridge and valley of Virginia was covered with spruce" about 18,000 years ago but ecological changes, development and logging at the turn of the century dramatically changed that.
He estimated that some of the trees at Sapling Ridge are 100 years old or older.
Unlike the state park system, public access to nature preserves is more limited and tightly controlled, Lipford said. "We don't want to put fences around these areas and turn them into museum pieces" but, at the same time, the entire purpose is to preserve them as natural habitats. "Access will be provided to the public as long as it does not impact on the resource we're trying to protect."
Fenwick agreed that has to be the first priority. All the efforts to control acid rain, pesticides and other environmental problems are "not worth a whit if we don't protect the habitats" of nature's creatures.
Lipford said the state will be monitoring the effects of air pollution and acid rain on the red spruce at the Highland County preserve. He said it is clear that the growth of the trees is declining but "we really can't say that's related to acid rain."
Fenwick said the Nature Conservancy has the option on another site that is adjacent to the 200 acres already purchased in Highland County.
He also said the organization is working to acquire a cave property in Wise County and up to 2,500 acres in Floyd County, which also contains rare animals and plants.
The conservancy recently received a gift of 42 acres of swamp forest in Chesapeake, Fenwick said.
The Sapling Ridge property, which is adjacent to the George Washington National Forest, is one of 50 land acquisitions in all 50 states that have been made by the conservancy in coordination with Earth Day on Sunday. All told, the commemorative purchases account for 71,000 acres of wildlife habitats.
by CNB