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Confederate trenches are preserved along |
By RUSTY DENNEN
Across much of the Fredericksburg area, land protected from sprawl--parks, military bases, conservation easements--stands out like green oases in a sea of rooftops.
For example, Fort A.P. Hill in Caroline, four Civil War battlefields, Caledon Natural Area in King George and Crow's Nest in Stafford offer food and shelter for wildlife in a landscape where natural areas are fast disappearing.
What if those green areas were connected to other nearby green space, greatly expanding the range of wildlife?
Florida, California and Maryland are among states creating "wildlife corridors" as a key component of their land-protection efforts.
According to a 2002 study at the University of Florida, such links encourage plant and animal migration through a fragmented landscape. The study used plant pollination by insects and seed dispersal by birds as indicators of healthy ecosystems.
Maryland is using "green infrastructure" to identify and preserve its most valuable remaining forests, wetlands and other natural areas.
Using satellite imagery, road and stream locations and biological data, it designated hubs of unfragmented habitat hundreds to thousands of acres in size. Next, the hubs were connected with linear remnants of natural land such as stream valleys and mountain ridges that allow animals, seeds and pollen to move freely.
Some examples include large expanses of forest around Savage River and Green Ridge State Forest in the western part of the state, state and local parks along the Patuxent River, and tidal marshes along the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and Fishing Bay Wildlife Management Area on the Eastern Shore.
Four years ago, Maryland set up its GreenPrint program to buy designated land from willing sellers.
Virginia is working on similar efforts. Its Conservation Lands Needs Assessment, completed several years ago, mapped conservation lands with the aim of identifying the most important ones and creating habitat corridors around them. That's still in the planning stage.
"We do a lot of green ways and we're working with multiple jurisdictions on trails. Certainly, wildlife being able to move is a side benefit," said Gary Waugh, a spokesman for the Department of Conservation and Recreation in Richmond. The agency oversees 44 state parks and natural areas.
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been adding to Virginia's Birding & Wildlife Trail, which now includes 18 trail loops along the coast, and 34 loops in the Piedmont and mountains.
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation and over a dozen nonprofit private conservation agencies such as The Nature Conservancy, have placed conservation easements on hundreds of thousands of acres around the state. The easements permanently restrict most types of development.
The Nature Conservancy recently began working with Fort A.P. Hill in a joint conservation effort. The Caroline County Army post encompasses about 76,000 acres, most of it forest and field. It is managed to accommodate wildlife, though its function is troop training. Now it's looking to protect land outside as a buffer.
The Army, Conservancy, Trust for Public Land, Conservation Foundation, Virginia Outdoors Foundation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are seeking to protect with easements another 35,000 acres outside the gates.
Last year, the Virginia Department of Transportation was cited by the Federal Highway Administration for helping to preserve the Great Dismal Swamp.
The highway department donated 758 acres of wetlands to the game department for preservation, and VDOT is building animal passages along the 12-mile-long U.S. 17 highway improvement project. One aim is to link the swamp's National Wildlife Refuge with a large area of wetlands.
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