Unfortunately, I was unable to attend The Future of Open Space in Chester County forum in West Chester, PA, yesterday but was pleased to see this article today by Dan Kristie in the Daily Local News. If you were in attendance, we would love to hear your feedback.
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WEST CHESTER — The Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said Chester County has done an excellent job preserving open space and its land-preservation method should be a model to all other counties in the commonwealth.
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But now is not the time to sit back and enjoy the view, said Michael DiBerardinis. Rather, he said, the land preservation battle will be lost if those interested in saving open space don't develop new strategies.
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"If we stay with our traditional tools, it won't be enough," he said. "The world of conservation is changing before us."
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Standing before a crowd of more than 100 at a Saturday afternoon seminar on the future of Chester County's open space, DiBerardinis said that activists should begin to emphasize what connects open space preservation to the economy and the social life of a community.
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"We need to struggle for those alignments," he said. "That's the future." For example, he said, activists should point to the presence of trees on an urban street that raise the value of properties on that street and that properties in areas that have healthy streams and parks are worth more than properties in areas without these features.
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And he said activists should focus on conveying the message that there is money to be made from selling locally grown food and fitting buildings with features that will make them LEED certified. He also said woodsy walking paths can actually have a democratizing effect — anyone can use a free walking path, and while they are on it, their socioeconomic status melts away as they become simply another traveler.
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On the less theoretical end, he said open-space preservationists have to find better ways to deploy easements, the legal agreements that restrict uses allowed on particular plots of land regardless of the land's zoning. Many places in Chester County should be preserved through easements, he said.
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He said open-space activists must be deeply involved in combating global warming, a phenomenon that he said has already affected vegetation and weather patterns in the state forests that his agency oversees. DiBrardinis delivered the keynote address at the The Future of Open Space in Chester County seminar at the Chester County Historical Society headquarters. The seminar's purpose was to promote a new open space exhibit at the headquarters.
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The forum was sponsored by the Daily Local News and the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and was planned through a collaboration of the historical society, the Natural Lands Trust, the Children's Country Week Association and West Chester University.
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DiBerardinis was a particularly appropriate speaker because he grew up in Downingtown during the 1950s when the area was far more rural than it is today. He said his childhood experiences playing in the woods inspired him to pursue a career in natural resources and the environment. He recalled playing in Downingtown's streams and fields as a child, and he told the crowd that his mother, after hanging the laundry in the morning, often had to chase an apparel-obsessed cow from the neighboring dairy pasture away from her clotheslines.
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The event also featured a panel discussion led by Daily Local News reporter Anne Pickering. It featured Pamela Brown, conservation director of the French and Pickering Creeks Conservation Trust; Joe Duckworth, president of Arcadia Land Co.; William Gladden of the Chester County Planning Commission; Robert Lonsdorf, senior planner at the Brandywine Conservancy; and Molly Morrison, president and CEO of the Natural Lands Trust.
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