
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994                   TAG: 9405020094
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ABINGDON                                LENGTH: Medium

GROUP TARGETS AT-RISK ENVIRONMENTS

The Virginia chapter of The Nature Conservancy will focus its projects on eight areas of the state it has identified as the most environmentally threatened.

The conservancy will concentrate on the Clinch Valley Bioreserve area, the Green Sea wetlands, the Black Water swamps and savannas, the Chesapeake beaches, the Chesapeake River area, the Shenandoah prairies, the Red Spruce highlands in Highland County and the Roanoke Valley glades.

The Clinch Valley Bioreserve area is one of the most threatened areas in the state in part because of the number of threatened species, said Michael Lipford, director of the conservancy's Virginia chapter. Lipford spoke Saturday during the organization's annual meeting at the Barter Playhouse in Abingdon.

"Twenty-four percent of our natural diversity in Virginia is in the Clinch and Powell river watersheds," Lipford said.

The conservancy is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in a stream bank restoration program aimed at reducing agricultural pollution of the Clinch and Powell rivers, Lipford said. The program pays for farmers to build fences to keep their cattle out of the rivers, establish alternative water sources for cattle and restore stream banks, he said.

In projects such as the Clinch Valley Bioreserve effort, the conservancy works to protect the environment while also helping the economy, Lipford said. In the Clinch Valley project, the group is working to promote "ecotourism" and has joined with the nonprofit Coalition for Jobs and the Environment to help small businesses.

"With the decline in the coal economy and tobacco, The Nature Conservancy is well-positioned to find a solution before the train wrecks," Lipford said.

John Sawhill, president and chief executive officer of The Nature Conservancy, also addressed chapter members. He discussed the national organization's mission.

"We are doing it not so much for ourselves, but for our children and our grandchildren and future generations," he said. "We owe it to them to leave them an environment as rich as that here in Abingdon. If we don't, I'm afraid our descendants will never forgive us."

In the next few years, the conservancy hopes to focus on its international conservation programs, its science program and governmental and public relations, Sawhill said.

The conservancy picked about 20 sites, primarily in Central and South America and the Pacific, to focus its efforts to protect environmental diversity, Sawhill said.

"The earth is just one planet. Environmental issues really connect us around the world," he said.

The conservancy needs to work closely with governments on an international, state and local basis to protect the environment, he said.

Sawhill rebutted the common belief that protecting the environment will cost jobs.

"It is not a question of jobs versus the environment. It's a question of short term versus long term," Sawhill said.

by CNB