THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602120059
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
The Virginia Natural Heritage Program, which helps protect rare plants and endangered animals from extinction, won an international award in 1994 as a top conservation program in the Western Hemisphere.
This year, state environmentalists feared the program faced its own extinction.
The Allen administration, intent on downsizing government, proposed several changes to the program in recent weeks and guaranteed its funding for less than three years. Two Republican lawmakers carried the proposal to the House and Senate, and Gov. George F. Allen shifted the program's $600,000 annual budget to another department.
Since its inception 10 years ago, the heritage program and its 19-member staff have been part of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation in Richmond. Allen had wanted to move the program to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which relies heavily on license fees from hunters and sportsmen rather than tax dollars for its operations. The governor also would have scattered staffers throughout the state.
While it now appears the program will remain unchanged, the proposal nonetheless illustrates an ever-widening gap between environmentalists and the Republican administration.
After learning of the proposal, environmentalists charged that the administration was trying to kill a program that can hinder economic growth if an endangered species - even an animal as small as an insect or a rodent - is found on a prospective development site. Further, they said Allen and his appointed secretary of natural resources, Becky Norton Dunlop, oppose government intrusion on private property.
``This is an ideological battle,'' said Roy A. Hoagland, assistant director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Virginia, which strongly opposes the proposal. ``This program violates their basic views.''
In committee hearings, Dunlop has testified that the changes are designed simply to save taxpayers more than $1 million while keeping the program intact - albeit in a different department and form.
Tom Smith, heritage program director since 1990, did not want to comment on whether he supports the administration's proposal. He said only that ``obviously people around the office here are nervous about change.''
But he offered a long list of the program's accomplishments. It was first formed with The Nature Conservancy, a private environmental group, but became strictly state-run in 1988.
Its staff has computerized 6,000 locations of rare plants, insects and animals in Virginia. The staff receives 3,000 requests a year for information on the whereabouts of certain species. Researchers have created 15 natural areas encompassing 15,000 acres where threatened species exist.
Botanists have found the world's largest collection of a plant species called Michauxi's sumac at Fort Pickett. And they also have located perhaps the world's only known stand of a still-unnamed sedge grass in Grayson County.
In Virginia Beach, staff members helped inventory the city's population of endangered species and assisted in analyzing wetlands and creating a project to preserve farmland.
``If they weren't there, you'd be missing the science that everyone says is needed to make all these decisions about environmental protection,'' said Mary Heinricht, a Virginia Beach environmental consultant.
Tom Hopkins, an assistant state secretary of natural resources, said he concurs with these assessments. To him and the administration, the question is not the program's worth, but where best to put it.
``We saw a window of opportunity to save some money and put the program in line with other wildlife protection programs,'' Hopkins said. ``It made sense to us.''
Since it began, the program has been funded almost exclusively by state tax dollars and federal grants. Environmentalists say that without state dollars as much as $700,000 in federal grants could be lost.
The proposal also has drawn fire from some hunting and fishing groups, which fear their license fees will be diverted from such activities as fish hatcheries and wildlife research to finance the natural heritage program.
The House Conservation and Natural Resources Committee, which was reviewing the proposal, apparently has quashed it for now.
Del. A. Victor Thomas, a Roanoke Democrat who chairs the committee, said Thursday he had rejected a request from the proposal's sponsor in the House, Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, to amend the measure and hold another hearing. For this year, he said, the idea is dead in the House.
``We never saw anything to show adequate funding for the years ahead,'' Thomas said.
``There were a lot of feelings that this thing would either die or the funding would have to be supplied by hunters and boaters and folks like that,'' he added. ``And I didn't hear much support for any of that.''
In the Senate, a committee rejected the proposal last week, and there is little indication that it will be revived, lawmakers and aides said.
But there still is the issue of moving the program's $600,000 back to the Department of Conservation and Recreation. However, Thomas is sponsoring a measure to do so, and he sits on the House Appropriations Committee. ``I think it'll be received fairly warmly,'' he said with a smile. ILLUSTRATION: ABOUT THE HERITAGE PROGRAM
Its 19 employees have computerized 6,000 locations of rare
plants, insects and animals in Virginia.
The staff receives 3,000 requests a year for information on the
whereabouts of certain species.
Researchers have created 15 natural areas encompassing 15,000
acres where threatened species exist.
by CNB