Nature Conservancy

NEW YORK -- Westvaco Corp., one of the largest U.S. makers of paperboard, said it agreed to allow the Nature Conservancy to suggest zones protecting rare wildlife in all the company's timberland, which could restrict logging.The agreement, effective Nov. 1, covers 1.3 million acres in Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The nonprofit environmental group will survey the timberlands for areas that include endangered animals and plants, or even unusual waterfalls and rock formations, and recommend how to preserve them.

An article in yesterday's Maryland section misspelled the name of Nature Conservancy President John Sawhill.The Sun regrets the error.These days, the way to truly protect national parks, historic areas and environmental sanctuaries is to buy them before the developers do -- or find someone who will.The Antietam National Battlefield in Western Maryland's Washington County is a case in point. Six months ago, the final section of the field not already national land came up for sale for the first time in a century.

A land conservation group has agreed to pay a Connecticut couple $75,000 to delay, and possibly drop, plans to buy a 55-acre lakeside retreat in the center of the Adirondack Park.New York state officials said the deal, announced Aug. 12, would bolster the state's chances of buying a 15,000-acre wilderness estate in the park, of which the 55-acre tract is a part.The 55-acre parcel, known as Camp Bliss, is in the heart of the larger property, which is owned by Marylou Whitney, an heiress and fixture of Manhattan and Saratoga society.

Five animal rights' advocates, two dressed in pink pig suits, were arrested at Harborplace's Light Street pavilion yesterday, protesting against a store they say contributes to the cruel deaths of wild animals in the Hawaiian rain forest.Members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals shouted slogans, distributed literature and handcuffed themselves to the doors of the Nature Company, which sells science and environmental materials.They were protesting the store's support of the Nature %o Conservancy, an environmental group that the protesters contend uses wire snares to trap wild pigs on its rain forest lands in Hawaii.

THERE is a new grass-roots movement building in the United States. The property rights of thousands of citizens are under attack by federal agencies and radical environmentalists. These citizens have begun to organize and are fighting back. What follows is my own horror story of why I became involved in the property-rights movement.All my life I have wanted to be a farmer. I studied at Rutgers Agricultural College and Yale Forestry School, and went to work first for the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group, and then as a lobbyist for the National Audubon Society.

WE LOVE the Nature Conservancy when it buys up some little piece of Maryland to hold harmless the habitat of some disappearing flora or fauna.The latest such effort, described in the Nature Conservancy of Maryland's fall newsletter, concerns the endangered harperella (Ptilimnium nodosum), a member of the carrot family that grows to less than two feet tall and has tiny white flowers resembling Queen Anne's lace.There's a drawing of Ptilimnium in the newsletter, and it looks for all the world like a carrot (well, like the carrot plant, not the edible root)

Kevin Raines' paintings, watercolors and charcoals of the Adirondack Mountain Wilderness reflect a deep love of that great New York state park, and take the viewer on a vicarious trip into a region of mountains, lakes, streams and woods that seem untouched by the disfiguring human presence. In one of his charcoals, "Resting at McIntyre Falls," we can spy his backpack, like an added signature, laid at the base of a tree; otherwise, all is nature.It's a refreshing experience for an urbanite to visit this exhibit, which overflows Notre Dame College's regular Gormley Gallery and is partly installed in the "gallery" -- really the hall -- of Gibbons Hall elsewhere on campus.

In 1987, Carolyn Bean Publishing Ltd. posted a $3 million loss on sales of $2.7 million, reflecting its struggle to compete against a field of greeting-card giants.When Bruce Wilson was hired as chief operating officer to rescue the ailing Northern California company, he knew that the company not only had to slash payroll and operating expenses, it had to find a niche in the $3.5 billion greeting-card industry."Carolyn Bean was trying to be everything to everyone," Wilson said. "But there was no way we could compete against giants like Hallmark, American Greeting and Gibson."

BREATHE easier. They're saving the Canby's dropwort, Maryland's rarest plant.The winter issue of the newsletter of the Nature Conservancy of Maryland tells the story:On a hot summer day 10 years ago, three officials of the Maryland Natural Heritage program spotted the fragile white flower of the Oxypolis canbyi in an Eastern Shore wetland. Botanists had been searching the Delmarva Peninsula for years looking for the dropwort, which was thought to have gone the way of the dodo.News of the discovery spread, and the wetland became a priority.

Nassawadox, Va. -- Northampton County, down here at the very end of the Delmarva peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, is at once stupefyingly rich and almost unimaginably poor.To the east, out beyond a broad and intimidating expanse of mud flats, marshes and shallow bays, lie the barrier islands. Northampton's are Hog, Cobb, Wreck, Ship Shoal and Smith. Other islands, closer to the mainland, stretch north to Maryland: Parramore, Cedar, Metomkin, Wallops, and of course Assateague.

How far should humans go to accommodate the wildlife in their midst? That depends on what kind of wildlife you're talking about: There's a big difference, for example, between animals that are cute and cuddly and those that would gladly eat you for lunch. Take the Komodo dragon, a 10-foot reptile with powerful jaws and razor-sharp teeth found only on a couple of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago. For centuries, villagers there worshiped the dragons as sacred incarnations of ancestral spirits.

Keith Huot first sighted the neat little house in the forest while cycling along Providence Road in Baltimore County. He learned from others that the house was for sale and that potential buyers were talking about knocking it down. "I felt like I could save something unique," says Huot. So he and his wife, Amy, decided to buy the circa-1950 house, which had about 1,000 square feet with just one bedroom -- in a loft -- and one bath. A nice, cozy dwelling for a couple. But when daughter Maddie came along, the Huots needed to expand the space.

RICHARD H. GOODWIN, 96 Nature Conservancy president Richard H. Goodwin, a botanist who as national president of the Nature Conservancy in the late 1950s and mid-1960s helped preserve thousands of acres of open space on both coasts, including 1,100 acres around the farm where he lived in East Haddam, Conn., died July 6 in East Lyme, Conn. The death was confirmed by his son, Richard Goodwin Jr. Dr. Goodwin, the Katharine Blunt professor emeritus of botany at Connecticut College in New London, was president of the Nature Conservancy from 1956 to 1958 and again from 1964 to 1966.

Seeking to bridge a recent history of suspicion, environmentalists and smart-growth activists are reaching out to hunters and anglers in Western Maryland, trying to enlist them in public debates about the development of the mountainous, mostly rural region. It's an unusual overture. Hunters, in particular, fear that "tree huggers," as they sometimes call environmental activists, want to ban firearms or hunting for sport. But with a 4,300-home development proposed near a state forest in Allegany County and a new highway project skirting another state-owned hunting area, activists see the region's many anglers and hunters as potential allies if alerted to how development could hamper their favorite outdoor activities.

William Draper Blair Jr., 79, former president of the Nature Conservancy and a State Department spokesman who earlier had been a newspaper reporter, died Saturday from complications of multiple system atrophy, a rare brain disorder, at his summer home in Vinalhaven, Maine. Born in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in Washington and New York City, Mr. Blair was a 1949 graduate of Princeton University and began his career that year in Baltimore at The Evening Sun. Sent to Korea as one of the Sunpapers' war correspondents, he was shot in the back by a North Korean sniper while covering a Marines operation along the Han River.

Artists from Howard Community College spread out at Howard County Nature Conservancy on Thursday. "It's a beautiful place," says instructor Peter Collier, who has been taking landscape painting students there for years.

On September 10, 2005 LUCILLE K. SCHUSLER (nee Kroyer) beloved wife of the late John James Schusler and devoted mother of Jeanne Schusler Ten Broeck, loving grandmother of David Ten Broeck and dear sister of Dr. Eugene J. Guazzo of St. Mary's County, Maryland, also survived by a niece and several nephews. Services and Interment private. Memorial contributions may be made to The Nature Conservancy, 4245 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203. Arrangements by the family owned Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home Inc.

On September 10, 2005 LUCILLE K. SCHUSLER (nee Krozer) beloved wife of the late John James Schusler and devoted mother of Jeanne Schusler Ten Broeck, loving grandmother of David Ten Broeck and dear sister of Dr. Eugene J. Gurazzo of St. Mary's County, Maryland, also survived by a niece and several nephews. Services and Interment private. Memorial contributions may be made to The Nature Conservancy, 4245 N. Fairfax Dr., Suite 100, Arlington, VA 22203. Arrangements by the family owned Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home Inc.

A federal judge cleared the way yesterday for Maryland wildlife officials to start killing mute swans, ending a two-year challenge from animal-rights groups to save the beautiful but destructive birds. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan denied a petition from the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals to extend federal protections to the birds, which now number more than 3,600 in Maryland and are multiplying quickly. The non-native swans consume large amounts of Chesapeake Bay grasses, which provide food for migratory birds and crucial habitat for crabs and other bay life.

Suddenly, On November 14, 2004, THOMAS SCHAEFFER; loving son of Anna and the late Clement Schaeffer; dear brother of Evalyn Kutluk and Judy Schaeffer; dear uncle of Ruth Winsker and Beth Safranek. A Memorial Service will be held in the family owned Ruck Towson Funeral Home Inc., 1050 York Road (beltway exit 26A) on Thursday, at 7 P.M. Family will receive friends on Thursday, from 2 to 4 P.M. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Nature Conservancy of Maryland, 5410 Grosvenor Lane, Suite 100, Besthesda MD 20814.