"Now is the time to redouble our efforts" to save them for future generations, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates said last night in a speech at Prince William County's historic courthouse in Manassas.

The observance of the war's 150th anniversary, which began last Tuesday at Fort Sumter, is the perfect time to shield the surviving places that were hallowed by the sacrifices of soldiers from North and South, Howell said.

His remarks kicked off Virginia's first statewide battlefield preservation conference, which continues today in Prince William. Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the date the Virginia Secession Convention in Richmond voted to secede.

The courthouse, built in 1893, sits at the corner of Grant and Lee avenues, an appropriate setting for the speech.

"Being able to learn from and relive history where it actually occurred isn't a given," the Stafford Republican said. "It's not something we can take for granted."

Without progress now, battlefields will disappear, Howell said. Some 50,000 acres of the state's "core" battlefields, where the most intense fighting took place, are intact but without protection from development, he said.

"The times we live in right now may be one of the last, best chances to protect Virginia's unpreserved Civil War battlefields--before they are lost forever," he said. "I'm hopeful that I'm wrong, but we just cannot take the chance."

Yet Howell also hailed "great strides" on the conservation front.

Word in January that Walmart, confronting a legal challenge, had decided against building on the Wilderness battlefield in Orange County was "heartening" news, he said. "Persuading Walmart not to develop, but preserve, its property there was a great victory," Howell said. " Walmart's decision couldn't have been more timely as Virginia and our entire nation begin this year to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War."

The speaker hailed the Virginia conservation tax credit program, which has helped preserve more than 500,000 acres as open space, including battlefields across the commonwealth.