Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990 TAG: 9005100225
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES and DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Explore Park planners say they hope the center - perhaps the first of its kind on the East Coast - would capitalize on the nation's growing interest in environmental issues, plus build ties to Virginia's largest university that would help in fund raising.
Explore project director Bern Ewert has met twice in the past two months with Peter Eyre, dean of Tech's regional veterinary college, and two other professors in hopes of drafting a memorandum that will spell out the goals and organization of the "National Environmental Education Center."
The center, which would be built at the proposed Explore living-history state park along the Roanoke River gorge east of Vinton, could serve as both a tourist attraction and a classroom.
Tech and Explore officials said the center might showcase exhibits on such issues as global warming, acid rain and gypsy moths.
Ewert envisions the center will "show with high-tech equipment, computers and graphics what's happening to the world's environment.
"You would be able to see the world through the eyes of a dog or an owl or a buffalo, to see the impact of the ozone layer or changes in our climate," he said. "All of the issues that make up the environmental crisis in the world would be brought to life in the center."
Explore spokeswoman Joyce Waugh said the center might also be a place for students, from kindergarten through college, to come for field trips or regular classes. Students could study plant and animal life in the woods surrounding the center or across the river at Explore's proposed zoo of North American animals.
Jerry Cross, director of continuing education for Tech's departments of forestry and wildlife, said the center also might be a place where public policy-makers discuss ways to maintain water and soil quality, for example, on private land.
Two such centers already exist - the Keystone Center in Colorado and the Office of Strategic Studies and Resource Policy at Texas A&M, he said.
Tech officials stress, however, that talks between the university and Explore still are informal. A third meeting is scheduled for later this month.
Eyre said Tech officials "are very close to something like a document that sets out the goals and understandings of the [environmental] program." But "the university certainly is not interested in making a financial commitment to this," he said. "I see it as an Explore project."
Privately, other Tech officials agree, saying the university would support the programs and provide some experts from faculty and staff based in Blacksburg, but Explore would have to raise the money to build the center.
How much the center would cost is still unclear.
Still, any Tech involvement would be a coup for Ewert, who has sought an official tie with the university ever since he started drawing plans for Explore in 1985.
Explore's master plan even leaves room for a "university research campus" that planners hope Tech will set up.
Specifically, Explore planners have always hoped to get students and staff from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine involved with the park's proposed zoo as a way to cut costs on animal care.
That's something Eyre has long favored, too. He hopes his recently accredited veterinary college could use the zoo to energize a wildlife medicine program - a niche occupied by very few veterinary colleges across the country.
Explore also has long emphasized its commitment to teaching visitors about the environment. The master plan also calls for an environmental education camp where, Ewert says, adults and children could spend time "getting a hands-on experience of what's happening in the North American environment."
Ewert says the environment is a logical extension of Explore's basic story of Virginia's role in opening the American West. After all, he says, the Lewis and Clark expedition was partly a scientific expedition. And if Explore is going to show what North America was like in those days, he has long said, it only makes sense to show how man's conquest of the continent has changed the environment.
However, Explore's focus on the environment seems to have increased markedly since last summer - when two well-known Northern Virginia philanthropists with an interest in environmental causes signed on with the project.
Maggie Bryant of Fauquier County was named to the board of directors of the River Foundation, the non-profit group which runs Explore. And her son, environmentalist Carey Crane of Loudoun County, was appointed to the state board that owns the park site and governs the project.
Bryant is a major contributor to conservation groups and has made trips to Africa to study wildlife protection there. Crane is the founder of the Delta Foundation, a group that's seeking to preserve waterfowl migration routes along the Mississippi River. He's also helped advise Ewert on ways to make sure Explore is environmentally sensitive.
by CNB