Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 15, 1994 TAG: 9401150203
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One would be the writing of the tourism section of the "master plan" for the Alleghany Highlands. The other would provide seed money for "nontraditional agriculture" businesses providing an "environmentally sound product."
This, the county's grant proposal said, might include shiitake mushroom farms, an aquaculture operation or other similarly cutting-edge ideas.
Instead, some of the $22,000 the Forest Service gave the county ended up as a $10,000 no-interest loan to an exotic-game-shooting preserve.
Now a Western Virginia conservation activist is questioning whether the grant was handled legally - and whether a game-shooting compound is really an "environmentally sound" enterprise.
"This is all sort of weird," said Jim Loesel, a Roanoker who is secretary of the Citizens Task Force on National Forest Management. "I don't think this is meeting the intent of the law."
Loesel argued that the Boar-Walla game-shooting operation "is pretty far outside of the kind of investment" that the county was talking about when it applied for the Forest Service money.
Tammy Lawson, the assistant county administrator, said the Boar-Walla loan does indeed fit into the grant proposal's overall goal of nurturing businesses that don't depend on the timber industry, which dominates the area's economy.
The county didn't specifically mention Boar-Walla because it didn't know about the project at the time, Lawson said. "It's an unusual thing, and I know it's hard for people to accept things they're not used to," she said. "But that's the goal of the project: to get some things off the ground that aren't typical for this area."
The Forest Service gives money to local governments and others in areas that are economically dependent on national forest land. The money is supposed to help the communities wean themselves from this dependence by creating programs that are "consistent with environmental concerns."
About half of Alleghany County is national forest land.
Loesel maintained that bringing in exotic animals such as wild boar, goats and sheep can spread disease and harm the environment.
He pointed to the Great Smoky Mountains along the North Carolina-Tennessee border, where hundreds of free-roaming wild hogs have caused serious environmental damage to national park land by churning up soil and destroying the habitats of rare plants and animals. The hogs are descendants of wild European boars that escaped from a hunting preserve in 1920 and later mated with domestic pigs.
Lawson said Boar-Walla has assured the county that the park has taken steps to ensure that the animals don't escape or spread disease. Boar-Walla's operators could not be reached for comment Friday.
Loesel argued that federal rules were violated because the money was given to the hunting preserve without any study of the environmental damage it might cause.
The Forest Service says no environmental review was necessary "because it was not a major federal action and it involved limited financial assistance." Steve Parsons, an official with George Washington National Forest, said it is up to the county to decide exactly how to use the money.
by CNB