Virginia's Natural Heritage Program, now 25, protects rare animals, plants and places

No one will ever confuse the Chub Sandhill natural area with an art museum. But that's the way Chris Ludwig sees it.

Museums protect rare and beautiful works of art. Natural areas such as Chub protect rare and beautiful remnants of once-wild Virginia.

Ludwig is chief biologist for the state's Natural Heritage Program, which discovers and manages Virginia's rarest plants, animals and ecosystems.

"We have a very simple methodology," Ludwig said. "We find it. We protect it. We take care of it."

Ludwig spoke during a hike through the 1,000-acre Chub Sandhill in Sussex County — a preserve for little-seen wonders like the golden puccoon, a showy wildflower, and the dwarf water dog, a type of salamander.

When Europeans settled Virginia centuries ago, they encountered areas like these sandhills near the coast, pristine cliffs in the mountains and sinkhole ponds in the Shenandoah Valley.

Because these wild lands are now rare, they often harbor uncommon plants and animals. So by protecting a scenic and unusual landscape, the state also can protect its uncommon denizens.

"If we want opportunities for ourselves, for our children and our grandchildren to go out to natural areas and see places that are relatively undisturbed — that's what our work is about," said Tom Smith, the heritage program's director.

There are heritage programs in all 50 states, Canada and Latin America. Created in 1986, Virginia's program celebrated its 25th anniversary this year.

The program is a division of the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, which also runs state parks. Among other duties, the division oversees 60 natural areas, or preserves.

In a way, the natural areas are Virginia's other state parks — but less developed and less publicized.

"Hopefully people will, through this anniversary, go out and see some of these places that they own, and enjoy them," said Michael L. Lipford, Virginia director of The Nature Conservancy, a land-protection group. He became the Virginia heritage program's first director in 1986.

During the program's 25 years, its experts have discovered 30 species new to science, including the valley doll's daisy in the Shenandoah Valley, and about 300 that had never before been found in Virginia, including the southeastern myotis, a bat in the Great Dismal Swamp.

Virginia's division has twice been recognized — once by The Nature Conservancy and once by the conservation organization NatureServe — as the best natural-heritage program in the Western Hemisphere.

The program has 40 full-time and 10 part-time workers. It runs on about $2.5 million in state general funds and about $800,000 from grants and from contracts paid by state, local and federal agencies.

The various heritage programs grew out of a system, developed by The Nature Conservancy, that classifies natural rarities in a standardized, computerized way. That system enables scientists far from one another to agree on what's worth protecting.

The Chub Sandhill, about 70 miles southeast of Richmond, is a perfect example of how the program works.

The sandy rise along the Nottoway River was the beach of a sea millions of years ago. Virginia made it a refuge in 1995 by buying a 387-acre parcel for $95,000 in money from a voter-approved bond issue. Other acquisitions expanded the preserve to 1,066 acres.

In a strange way, Chub's star is the longleaf pine, a majestic tree that wasn't even growing there when the state bought the property. Scientists believe the tree was once common on the site. (Chub is the name of a rural spot nearby that doesn't appear on state maps.)

A longleaf-pine forest is an open, park-like type of woods that once stretched from southeastern Virginia to Florida to East Texas.

The sun-loving longleaf needs fire to keep down its brushy competition. Logging, the fighting of forest fires and other changes wiped out 97 percent of the longleaf forests, experts say.

"There used to be 1 million acres in Virginia, and now we can count the individual trees," said Darren Loomis, who oversees the natural areas in southeastern Virginia.

By conducting controlled burns and planting longleaf seedlings, heritage-program scientists are working to recreate the kind of open, pine-dotted savanna through which settlers rode their horses centuries ago.

The effort could take decades. But the goal of the Natural Heritage Program is to protect Virginia's rare lands forever.