•   News  
• Business
• Entertainment
• Pics
• Blogs
• Sports
• Obits
• Redskins
• Real Estate
• Classifieds
• Jobs
• Search Local
• Shop
• Bride & Groom

THE MORE VIRGINIA develops, the more realization grows that we need to hang on to as much of its wild places and things as possible.

With that in mind, five state agencies are in the final planning stages of a program to give concerned citizens a way to help out with conservation and environmental education.

The new effort, called the Master Naturalist program, will debut next month and is expected to expand rapidly throughout the state over the next couple of years.

Michelle Prysby, who will coordinate the effort, said the aim is to have local chapters up and running in 10 Virginia communities by this fall.

While the Fredericksburg area is not among the initial startup localities, officials involved in the program said it readily could have its own chapter as early as January, if there is sufficient interest.

As with the established and successful Master Gardener program, operated by Virginia Cooperative Extension, the new program provides interested citizens with a number of hours of broad-based training in exchange for a like number of hours of community service. In the naturalist program the training focuses on ecosystem education; the service aims at conservation and education.

Prysby comes to her new post from North Carolina, where she was most recently citizen science director at Great Smoky Mountain National Park. A native Tarheel, she graduated from North Carolina State and did her graduate work at the University of Minnesota. She works out of the extension's Charlottesville offices.

Lou Verner, a veteran biologist on the Master Naturalist technical advisory committee, said a wide range of conservation projects could be carried out by these trained volunteers, all aimed at environmental improvement, conservation or education.

Verner, director of the state's watchable-wildlife program, had firsthand experience with a Master Naturalist program in Texas, in his previous work in that state. "The Virginia program is patterned after the Texas one," he said, "which has been quite successful now for about 10 years, with about 50 local chapters and 2,300 trained volunteers."