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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.