THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY IDA KAY JORDAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 97 lines
The clock is ticking on the Hoffler Creek Wildlife Foundation, but pressure doesn't bother the members of the board who refused to be defeated.
The citizens fought development of a 142-acre site known as the Twin Pines Borrow Pit area. They enumerated flora and fauna in the natural woods around the 35-acre lake and they called in environmental experts to help convince the city that the unspoiled habitat would be an asset to Portsmouth.
After almost two years of talk and delay, City Council members voted last month to take over the Churchland site and to permit the foundation to create its wildlife refuge. But the city imposed a one-year deadline on the citizens to spur them to act.
``We can do it,'' board chairman Randi Strutton said. ``There are very few cynics about this. Mostly everybody I talk to is ready to get started.''
In fact, on Thursday, foundation vice president Jerry Nickerson was stewing about red tape as he led visitors through heavy underbrush to the edge of the briny lake created when the Department of Transportation dug a 55-foot hole during construction of Interstate 664 and the Western Freeway.
``We had somebody lined up to come in here today and clear this road to the lake,'' he said.
``But the city and the state haven't signed the papers. The city won't let us come in here officially. We had to cancel our free help.''
Nickerson said he also has a group of young environmentalists who have volunteered to clear debris and weeds from a gravel path all the way around the water.
``We're ready and we can't move,'' he said. ``We need to get started.''
The city got the land from the state for $1 after a potential developer backed away from a $1.5 million bid to put a housing subdivision on the land abutting Hoffler Creek, the dividing line between Portsmouth and Suffolk.
That the site would become the last refuge for wildlife in the middle of the fast-developing Churchland area was not even remotely envisioned two years ago. The city turned down the land the first time it was offered and told the state to sell it to a developer to put another subdivision in the middle of the wetlands.
However, neither the city nor the state reckoned on the people-power that was mobilized by a group of people who refused to accept the conventional thinking about vacant land in Hampton Roads.
Even as they wrangled with the City Council over the future of the site on the Suffolk city line, they accumulated more than $16,000, 120 members and promises of help from most major environmental groups.
Strutton said she expects the support to mushroom now that the city has acted.
``We already have a promise of two observation towers and we'll try to get them in soon,'' she said. ``Many, many people have offered to help. The enthusiasm spreads.''
And, she added, she no ``longer has to solicit speaking engagements.''
``I've talked to dozens of groups in recent weeks,'' she said.
Strutton, a former school teacher who lost an election bid for the School Board this year, talks a lot about the educational opportunities that go with the nature preserve.
``We hope to create an oyster farm down on the creek,'' she said. ``And we're planning classes to teach children how to build a backyard habitat to attract birds.''
Strutton envisions a cooperative program with the Children's Museum of Virginia and wants to relate a new environmental exhibit to Hoffler Creek.
``The children can go to the museum, see the exhibit and come to the refuge to see the real thing,'' she said.
In addition, a wildlife tour of nearby Craney Island is being planned, she said.
``We would like to run a shuttle bus between Craney Island and Hoffler Creek,'' she said.
The trails through the area, which includes acres of pristine woodlands, will be designed by environmental scientists and students majoring in science at local universities.
The Foundation's big expenditure will be a visitor's center that's ``state-of-the-art ecologically, technically and architecturally,'' Strutton said.
``Professionals have estimated the center will cost $100,000, but I'm not yet persuaded it will,'' she said.
``I think we'll get donations of materials and of professional help.''
Strutton said the Foundation's plan to work with the city and with the schools and with other government agencies is ``new around here.''
``There has never been anything like this opportunity,'' she said. ``It's up to citizens to make it worthwhile. But we all have to do it together - young and old, corporations and civic leagues, the city, the schools, everybody.'' ILLUSTRATION: MARK MITCHELL photos, The Virginian-Pilot
Hoffler Creek Wildlife Foundation's Jerry Nickerson says red tape
has held up volunteer work, such as the clearing of a road into the
habitat.
A borrow pit lake in the Churchland area of Portsmouth is being
turned into a nature study area complete with observation towers, an
oyster farm and instruction events for children, say members of
Hoffler Creek Wildlife Foundation. Cattails, left, growing along the
lake near Town Point Road are part of the environment that the city
became convinced should be preserved.
KEYWORDS: WILDLIFE CONSERVATION by CNB