THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501120021
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Preservation is progress, as we have said before, if what is preserved merits preserving.
On the merits of anything or anyone, reasonable people may - and not infrequently do - disagree. But surely most partisans of Planet Earth would concur that the swampy Southampton County bottomland that retired Portsmouth surgeon Arthur A. Kirk and his wife, Marie, recently conveyed to the Nature Conservancy is worth protecting.
Giant cypresses, some with 8-foot girths, in this 76-acre chunk of wilderness are hundreds of years old. Wildlife thrives among them. The site henceforth will be known as the Blackwater River Preserve.
The Kirks wished the tract to be forever undisturbed by humankind for the benefit of humankind. Would the commonwealth of Virginia, the Kirks asked, take the acreage under its wing? The answer was no, but the state pointed the public-spirited pair to the Nature Conservancy.
That venerable environmental organization has over the years acquired - by purchase or gift - millions of acres of America the beautiful. A fifth of the nonprofit agency's holdings are in Virginia. Not a little of it is on the Eastern Shore.
While other big nonprofit champions of the environment have lost members and money in the 1990s, forcing them to chop spending and lay off staff, the Nature Conservancy flourishes. That's largely because it has stuck to its preservation mission, quietly bringing more and more land under its control.
Other major environmental groups committed many of the sins of for-profit enterprises during the 1980s. They got fat, lost focus and slipped into bad managerial habits. The softening economy compelled them to rein in their ambitions and scramble for funds.
But the Nature Conservancy waxes. Its assets are valued at $1 billion. Its revenue for 1992 totaled $278.5 million. While some environmental groups' support is eroding, that of the Nature Conservancy is not. More and more, or so it appears, preservation is popular progress. by CNB