Environmental Leaders to Meet in Staunton

Environmental leaders taking part in the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute (VNRLI) will gather March 11-13 for a three-day workshop in Staunton. Leaders from Virginia's industry, businesses, local and state government, and the environmental community will continue their year-long work together with a full agenda covering important skills for conflict resolution, personal leadership, and collaborative dialogue.

The three-day workshop will include an expert panel on Corporate Stewardship, featuring representatives from Coors, Merck and the Poultry Federation, and discussion of agriforestry collaborative efforts in water quality and agricultural waste management, and total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for water quality.

The group will visit several local farms, including Polyface Farm in Swoope and Dale Beery's poultry farm, as case studies of agricultural stewardship. At Dale and Doris Heatwole's D& D Dairy farm, the group will see the Virginia Tech pilot project that turns dairy waste into struvite pellets. At Oren Heatwole's River Bank Farm, they will see the waste-to-energy pyrolysis project.

Caroline K. Wilkinson, program manager at UVA's Institute for Environmental Negotiation, said, "The Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute is designed to foster communication and understanding between environmental leaders representing different interests in Virginia's natural resources. Each session of the year-long program offers interactive exercises that focus on a topic, such as conflict resolution, facilitation, consensus building, interest-based negotiation, public involvement, environmental justice and collaborative leadership."

VNRLI is a partnership of the University of Virginia's Institute for Environmental Negotiation; Virginia Cooperative Extension, Virginia Department of Forestry, and Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. The leadership program is supported this year by a special grant from the Dominion Foundation to support collaborative decision-making for protecting Virginia's environment and natural resources. The group's activities are also supported by the sale of Chesapeake Bay license plates in Virginia; grant funds from the USDA Forest Service's Urban and Community Forestry Grant Program, as well as the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the Merck & Co. Stonewall Plant and VNRLI Alumni.

After the visit to the Shenandoah Valley, the program will take leaders to Southwest Virginia to learn about coal mining, land reclamation and sustainable forestry during its next session.

For further information, visit the VNRLI Web site, http://www.virginia.edu/ien/vnrli; contact program manager Caroline Wilkinson at 434.409.1320 or via e-mail: cwilk@virginia.edu.

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The Virginia Department of Forestry protects and develops healthy, sustainable forest resources for Virginians. Headquartered in Charlottesville, the Agency has forestry staff members assigned to every county to provide service to citizens of the Commonwealth. VDOF is an equal opportunity provider.

With nearly 16 million acres of forest land and more than 144,000 Virginians employed in forestry, forest products and related industries, Virginia forests provide more than $27.5 Billion annually in benefits to the Commonwealth.