ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 3, 1996 TAG: 9607030016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
BUFFALO Mountain in Floyd County has been called by Thomas J. Rawinski, a state ecologist, ``the single most impressive natural area in Virginia.'' We're not about to quibble.
News that the state is buying this treasure to preserve it has been long awaited, and not just by the numerous species living there. Runaway commercialism and development aren't exactly encroaching on the mountain, but who knows what future decades might bring?
The state's protection will ensure it won't ever end up on a list of endangered places. Indeed, Virginia should be doing more of this kind of thing.
Buffalo Mountain's 3,971-foot summit is among the highest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and from its peak on a clear day you can see to North Carolina. The mountain itself, needless to say, is also visible from long distances.
It has historic significance: Land on it once was included in a tract given to Gen. Henry ``Lighthouse Harry'' Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, for service in the Revolutionary War.
It is also home to an abundance of rare plants and animals. The mountain's ecosystem, unique in Virginia, includes plants that normally grow on prairies of the Midwest and in Canada's cold extremes. It is the habitat for a species of mealybug that, scientists believe, exists nowhere else in the world.
The Buffalo Mountain project was among those envisioned by the General Assembly in 1989, when it passed the Natural Area Preserves Act. Funds to meet the $2 million purchase price became available via a $95 million bond issue for parks and recreation approved by state voters in a 1992 referendum.
That bond referendum signified new recognition of the important role such natural areas can play in providing low-cost recreational facilities for families and in helping to develop tourism.
In this recognition, the commonwealth had fallen far behind other states. For 20 years previously, Virginia had not set aside any land as natural areas - an absurd failure.
By next summer, the state hopes to open Buffalo Mountain to the public while carefully maintaining it as a natural habitat. An access road will be improved and a nature trail created. Good.
Natural resources are meant to be enjoyed by people as well as mealybugs. Provided, of course, people leave nothing behind but footprints, and take nothing away but the pleasure of having walked amid natural beauty in an extraordinary spot.
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