Nature Conservancy

John Crittenden Sawhill, president and chief executive of the Nature Conservancy and former federal "energy czar" under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, died May 18 of complications from diabetes at a hospital in Richmond, Va. The Georgetown resident was 63. An outspoken conservationist and economist, he was born in Cleveland and raised in Ruxton. He was a 1954 graduate of the Gilman School and earned a bachelor's degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1958.

As part of Baltimore Green Week, the Nature Conservancy and the Oyster Recover Partnership are hosting an Earth Day "mix and mingle" event tonight at McCormick & Schmick's Staff from both organizations will introduce the new One for the Bay campaign, a new awareness and fundraising campaign that will support the organizations' ongoing efforts to help restore the Chesapeake Bay's oyster population. The One for the Bay reception is 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. tonight at McCormick & Schmick's , 711 Eastern Ave. For information about the reception go to the Nature Conservancy website . And find more Baltimore Green Week events here . And B&O Brasserie is hosting an Earth Day oyster happy hour tonight from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oysters will be available for $1 for guests, and all collected oyster shells will be donated to the Oyster Recovery Program.

The biological diversity of the United States is far richer than previously imagined, embracing more than 200,000 known species and more major ecological zones than any other country. Indeed, scientists who compiled the inventory, collected over the past quarter-century, estimate that the eventual number of species found, ranging from microscopic marine jaw worms to 12-foot polar bears, could be two or three times as large. The biological profile - the most complete analysis of the health and location of American wildlife - was drawn by a network of scientists organized by the Nature Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that buys land to protect natural habitat.

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.

ATLANTA - In one of the South's largest conservation deals, a land preservation group has paid $24 million for 38,000 acres of isolated woods and wetlands in southeastern North Carolina. The North Carolina chapter of the Nature Conservancy eventually will turn the property over to the state for permanent protection as a natural area. The group bought the land from International Paper. The acquisition, combined with unspoiled land the state already owns, would cluster about 100,000 acres together.

It's one of the sweet spots in Chesapeake country to float your boat, here where the Nanticoke River sweeps down out of Delaware and swallows its largest tributary, Marshy Hope Creek, before bending off south toward Tangier Sound. Stop paddling, cut the engine. Let the eddies slowly rotate your view across miles of nearly unbroken forest that surround the broad confluence and cloak the banks, upriver and down. Around the confluence, ospreys and herons are common traffic, and eagles are becoming so. By day, the wooded swamps ring with birdsong.

SNOW HILL -- A private conservation group has launched a far-reaching, $67 million program aimed at protecting thousands of acres that are vital to the Chesapeake Bay and other mid-Atlantic ecological systems. The Nature Conservancy, which already owned 90,000 acres in Maryland and Virginia, announced yesterday the purchase of another 12,000 acres in the two states. The acquisitions will extend the group's holdings in the mountains of Virginia and on Maryland's Eastern Shore -- where the addition of 3,300 pristine acres along Nassawango Creek will create the state's largest private nature preserve, a boggy 7,500-acre habitat for dozens of varieties of birds and plants.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)