NEXT WEEK, Maryland's political leaders arrive at one of those crossroads - deciding whether environmental protection is a nicety, to be indulged in flush times; or a core responsibility, an obligation to convey to our kids what we've inherited, enjoyed and made a living from.
Despite a looming budget shortfall, it shouldn't be a hard decision, the vote Wednesday by the Board of Public Works - Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Comptroller William Donald Schaefer and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp.
First, the state has the roughly $21 million needed to make the second biggest land conservation buy in Maryland's modern history - has it all in bonds ($12 million) and cash ($8 million) designated for just such opportunities.
Second, the 25,000 acres that will otherwise be put on the open market by the Glatfelter Pulp Wood Co. are as much about preserving a vital state industry - commercial forestry - as they are about preserving open space.
All but 4,000 acres (to be added to state natural resources lands) would remain in private ownership, managed as commercial forest, preserving more than 100 jobs and continuing some $28 million in annual revenues to the rural Eastern Shore, where most of the timberlands lie.
Environmentally, we're talking about protecting about 4,000 acres of wetlands, 31 miles of waterfront and 5 square miles of open space. Moreover, the lands, while scattered through seven counties, link exceedingly well with natural areas preserved or identified as high priority for protection.
"If we walk away from this, we're walking away from a whole new generation of land use, from a new dimension in combining conservation and working landscapes," says Patrick F. Noonan, whose nonprofit Conservation Fund negotiated the deal with Glatfelter.
When Noonan talks, everyone should listen. He's protected literally millions of acres of America's choicest landscapes during a 30-year career in which he headed the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund.
He was described at a recent dinner as "foremost a businessman ... demanding strategies that work, accountability [and] economic use of landscapes."
He sees the Glatfelter deal as a model. "In the next decade, some 10 million acres of timber company lands are projected to come on the market," he says. "Unless we can create public-private partnerships like this one, there's no way the conservation community can protect such acreages."
The Glatfelter deal also is a key step toward what I think is an emerging vision for the future of Maryland's Eastern Shore, a vision to keep the place like it's been for the last few centuries - a lovely, working landscape of farms, forests and waters yielding abundant seafood.
There's little chance traditional zoning will get strict enough fast enough in most of the Shore to stem losses to development of farm and timberland, or the loss of water quality.
What will do it are continuing efforts by everyone from local land trusts to Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest's proposed conservation corridor, to projects by the Nature Conservancy, Conservation Fund and others; also, the National Park Service is considering sites on the Shore.
A unifying theme for much of this activity is the preservation of working landscapes. It's a theme that fits Shore sensibilities and politics. If well-managed, farms and forests are compatible with clean water, outdoor recreation and tourism, and with maintaining another vital part of the Shore's traditional charm, its small towns.
The Cambridges, Snow Hills, Chestertowns, Eastons, Viennas and Berlins will make it only if the countryside around them doesn't go up in sprawl that will drain resources from town centers.
But the state budget shortfall looms, and some key legislators and Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. have signaled the Board of Public Works to reject the deal.
Are there really more immediate needs for the $8 million open-space money the politicians would raid? (They can't take the $12 million in bonds.)
Absolutely - education, transit, health - there are always more pressing uses for money than preserving land, which is about the long term.
There were pressing Civil War Reconstruction needs when Secretary of State William H. Seward bought Alaska. President Thomas Jefferson worried he was overreaching when he tripled the size of the original 13 Colonies with the Louisiana Purchase; and many said "can't afford it" in 1919 when we bought the Grand Canyon.
Today, they all seem reasonable investments, just as Glatfelter will. With development taking 128,000 acres a year across the Chesapeake Bay watershed, this is no time to retreat on protecting nature and the rural economy.
