NASCAR Driver Laments Nature-Deficit Disorder

Danville Register & Bee – December 11, 2007
By Denice Thibodeau

The need to conserve Southside Virginia’s open spaces, farms and forests for future generations is a passionate cause for many in the region.

It also was the focus of the Governor’s Forum on Land Conservation in Southern Virginia, which was held Tuesday at the Prizery in South Boston.

More than 185 attendees listened as legislators, conservation and environmental proponents, and civic leaders talked about the importance of land conservation.

Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Pittsylvania County, in what he said might be his last public appearance as an elected official, told the crowd family farms should not be allowed to disappear from the Virginia landscape.

“If there’s one single thread that ties all Virginians together, it’s the love of the land,” Hawkins said. “It’s who we are, it’s who we were, it’s who we will be.

“And how we conserve and maintain that land is our legacy to our children, our children’s children and on down the line,” he added. “We cannot sit back and allow this state to turn into New Jersey. New Jersey, at one time, was the largest truck farming state in the union. Now it is the only state that’s designated an urban center.”

Hawkins warned that Virginia becoming a state designated an “urban center” is not as far-fetched as it might seem.

“When you look at Northern Virginia and Tidewater and the Richmond area, that could very well be our future unless we plan,” he said. “Once farms are broken up, once you pave over them, once you put in a used car lot, once you put in a strip mall - it’s all over.

“We need individuals who own land, who understand the importance of that land and who are willing to do the things to insure that our future does not disappear under a road plow and blacktop.”

Protecting the Future

Those looking to protect the land contend it can be done through conservancy easements.

In conservancy easements, individual landowners make an agreement with a conservancy group that limits how the property will be used in the future.

Such agreements are good forever, even if the property changes hands.

The original landowner negotiates the terms of the agreement with the organization it is granting the easement to, and the final agreement will be very specific about what buildings can be kept or put on the property, how the land can be used and whether trees can be cut down, according to land conservationists.

A conservancy agreement can protect a family farm from being subdivided into several small parcels and insure it never turns into a shopping mall or housing development.

NASCAR driver Ward Burton, a native of South Boston and the founder of Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation, has projects that entail protecting thousands of acres of land by creating habitat management and youth education programs.

He is passionate about saving what he calls the “rural culture” of Virginia.

When Burton spoke at the forum, his voice shook as he described how that culture will be lost if the land is allowed to be lost.

“This is what defines quality of life,” Burton said. “Our property, our farms and our heritage … this is the single greatest gift we can share with out future generations, our children.”

He said children are suffering from “nature-deficit disorder” because they are not connected with the outdoors.

“We have a responsibility to share our passion with the next generation,” he said. “Land is like a child - it must be nurtured; together, we can make a difference.”

The State’s Mission

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said when he took office two years ago that the state was placing approximately 50,000 acres of land in some kind of conservancy program each year. He challenged his staff to double those numbers, and plans for a total of 400,000 acres to be protected during his time in office.

“It will only be the way we want it to be if we work to make it the way we want it to be,” Kaine said. “If we just kind of allow things to happen, then things will happen that we might later regret, and our kids won’t have the same opportunities we had.”

Kaine said he considers land conservancy a crucial issue, one of the top four areas the governor said he wants to “make a mark in.” The other three areas of interest, he said, are Pre-K education, health care for the poor and transportation.

Kaine said he was impressed with the number of people who attended the forum.

“I think the turnout today is great; they’re (the organizers are) overjoyed,” Kaine said. “What we’re seeing is more and more people learning about these conservancy easement strategies and getting interested. I think it’s really an issue that’s getting to be a front-burner issue now.”

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