Master Naturalists from the North Texas chapter coordinate a wetland enhancement effort at a city park in conjunction with students and teachers from a Texas high school. Virginia is planning to start a Master Naturalist program. VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF GAME AND INLAND FISHERIES

Virginia plans Master Naturalist program modeled after Texas chapter. By Paul Sullivan

Date published: 3/11/2006

THE MORE VIRGINIA develops, the more realization grows that we need to hang on to as much of its wild places and things as possible.

With that in mind, five state agencies are in the final planning stages of a program to give concerned citizens a way to help out with conservation and environmental education.

The new effort, called the Master Naturalist program, will debut next month and is expected to expand rapidly throughout the state over the next couple of years.

Michelle Prysby, who will coordinate the effort, said the aim is to have local chapters up and running in 10 Virginia communities by this fall.

While the Fredericksburg area is not among the initial startup localities, officials involved in the program said it readily could have its own chapter as early as January, if there is sufficient interest.

As with the established and successful Master Gardener program, operated by Virginia Cooperative Extension, the new program provides interested citizens with a number of hours of broad-based training in exchange for a like number of hours of community service. In the naturalist program the training focuses on ecosystem education; the service aims at conservation and education.

Prysby comes to her new post from North Carolina, where she was most recently citizen science director at Great Smoky Mountain National Park. A native Tarheel, she graduated from North Carolina State and did her graduate work at the University of Minnesota. She works out of the extension's Charlottesville offices.

Lou Verner, a veteran biologist on the Master Naturalist technical advisory committee, said a wide range of conservation projects could be carried out by these trained volunteers, all aimed at environmental improvement, conservation or education.

Verner, director of the state's watchable-wildlife program, had firsthand experience with a Master Naturalist program in Texas, in his previous work in that state. "The Virginia program is patterned after the Texas one," he said, "which has been quite successful now for about 10 years, with about 50 local chapters and 2,300 trained volunteers."

I spoke with Verner and David Whitehurst, director of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' Wildlife Diversity Division, in a conference call this week, and both said expectations are for a high level of public interest in the Master Naturalist certification when it is formally announced next month.

Whitehurst said five state agencies are joining to set up and operate the initiative. Besides Game and Inland Fisheries, they include the Department of Forestry, Cooperative Extension, the Virginia Museum of Natural History and the Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Whitehurst sits on the program's administrative oversight panel. Both he and Verner believe it will go over well in the state.

Date published: 3/11/2006