Parks and refuges aren't enough to preserve America's environment. Land, water, and wildlife need to be protected everywhere
, to take me to the site of a proposed solar farm. On the way, we drive through hollows so steep and narrow that only one row of small, run-down houses fits along the creek. Just beyond their backyards, the Cumberland Forest property begins. Kreps points out railroad cars used to carry coal, idle for so long that kudzu vines have clambered all over them. Coal is fading. Appalachia knows it. The communities here are poor, and there’s not much work.
If you want to do conservation everywhere, then you have to include places where people are using the land or sea to make money. Boyd takes me, along with two state scientists, to see the animals in their new habitat. We drive up through trees, past coal-bed methane pumps, then pop out onto another Appalachian mesa, this one a pale green meadow. Silhouetted on the horizon is a massive bull elk, its heavy antlers ready to drop.
The Nature Conservancy doesn’t want to manage this land indefinitely. The plan is to set up permanent provisions that would allow public access as well as restrict development in the most ecologically valuable parts, and then sell the land and distribute the profit to the investors. Often the biodiversity at risk isn’t even on the farms. Consider the Chesapeake Bay. Nitrogen and phosphorus from farms in a 64,000-square-mile watershed spanning six states flow into the 200-mile-long estuary. If streams are polluted, the bay will be too. And dirty, turbid water kills seagrass, which forms a habitat for other species, such as blue crab, striped bass, and white perch. Even turning the entire bay into a protected area could not save it from threats upstream.
Holter plunges in a shovel so I can inspect the soil. “Bacteria form microbial glue,” he explains proudly, as I run my fingers through the moist, caramel-colored dirt, which is indeed gluey—and fragrant. “We’ve increased soil organic matter to 6 percent from 3 percent,” Holter says. His pasture is literally twice as alive as it used to be.
In 2021, farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners received more than $3.3 billion through U.S. Department of Agriculture conservation programs, covering more than 108 million acres. Those are big numbers, but more can be done. Programs that incentivize harmful practices—grants for waste lagoons at confined animal feeding operations, for example—could be phased out. Smarter investment in conservation for farms and forests could truly empower farmers to be environmental leaders.
Together, Moore explains, farmers and oyster growers can, in fact, “Save the Bay.” Someone shucks a four-inch oyster to show the group. Demonstration over, the oyster is up for grabs. No one volunteers, so I seize the opportunity and gleefully eat it myself. I jot down a few tasting notes: “marine, mossy, terrestrial, rich soil.”City nature is both an amenity for urbanites and valuable habitat for some species.Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
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