Conservation Partners call for Chesapeake Treasured Landscape Initiative
January 8, 2010
Representatives of many of the region’s most influential state, and non-profit conservation agencies and groups have endorsed a new push to conserve treasured landscapes in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Conserving the region’s best landscapes, they said, would improve the Chesapeake’s water quality and protect and restore wildlife habitat. It would maintain the region’s farms and forests. Places we revere for their ecological, historical, cultural and recreational values – places that help maintain and renew our identity and spirit – would be conserved, the group said.
“We strongly support the creation of a Chesapeake Bay Treasured Landscape Initiative to protect lands of significant ecological, cultural and historic significance,” the group wrote in a letter to Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Jackson heads the Federal Leadership Council, the committee of federal agency heads who are shaping a new Chesapeake restoration effort.
The letter is the result of a recent meeting sponsored by the Friends of the John Smith Chesapeake Trail, National Geographic Society, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to discuss the conservation strategies outlined in the Chesapeake Executive Order. Those attending included leaders of Virginia’s, Maryland’s, Delaware’s, and Pennsylvania’s state conservation agencies, officials from the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, representatives of American Indian communities, and leaders of major conservation groups. They agreed to help develop guiding principles and recommendations to implement and support a robust Treasured Landscapes strategy.
“We firmly believe that a strong federal commitment to, and funding for, conserving the Chesapeake’s Treasured Landscapes, enhancing public access and education, promoting citizen stewardship and restoring critical fish and wildlife habitats, are essential components of an effective strategy to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay,” they wrote.
They asked the Federal Leadership Committee to swiftly begin implementing such a program and:
- Provide sufficient funding to establish and advance a Chesapeake Treasured Landscape Initiative that includes targeted land conservation actions including acquisitions and conservation easements, creation of new units of the National Park and Wildlife Refuge system, and significant expansion of public access and interpretation opportunities throughout the Chesapeake;
- Set an ambitious goal for conserving and sustaining Chesapeake Treasured Landscapes; and,
- Fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) and that the Secretary of the Interior use his allowable 10 percent set aside of the LWCF to initiate a Chesapeake Treasured Landscape program and to support the conservation of other national treasures.
The Chesapeake’s water quality is inextricably linked to the land, the group said, noting that the Bay has one of the largest land to water ratios of any estuary on earth. “Intact forests, marshes and sweeping shorelines along the Bay and its rivers have immense filtering capacities that are needed for clean water,” the letter said.
“The Chesapeake’s lifelines are the great rivers flowing towards it—the Susquehanna, Potomac, Nanticoke, Rappahannock, James and others, which are each nationally prominent in their own right,” the letter said, adding that the river and bay shores harbor sites that shaped our national history and that “we revere as individuals and as communities for their ecological, historical, cultural and recreational values and for their role in maintaining and renewing our identity and spirit.”
Some of these landscapes are protected or formally recognized as parks and wildlife refuges, but many others are not; they are sweeping forests, working farms, culturally important lands, and natural areas that are linked to the Bay, its tributaries, and its great rivers.
The group said the Treasured Landscape program would benefit from the sophisticated understanding of the public agencies and conservation partners in the region for its implementation.
“Our desire is that this initiative expands the conservation of our most treasured lands and stimulates citizen involvement in land protection and public access for the health of the Bay and its rivers and for the benefit and enjoyment of the 17 million citizens who live in its watershed and its millions of visitors,” it concluded.
Read a copy of the letter here.
