Twirling
its way below Appalachian mountain ridges, the Clinch
River Valley is the rustic, protected home of the shiny
pigtoe freshwater mussel — an endangered species
and, for the past three years, a tourist attraction.
But this is Southwest Virginia where a century of coal
mining has inflicted its share of environmental ravages.
The coalfields as hotbeds of ecological understanding?
Yes, it’s true.
With Nature Conservancy tour guides leading the way,
visitors to the Clinch River Valley can take a canoe
ride down the river to learn about and observe rare
and endangered mussels, including the shiny pigtoe,
rough rabbits foot and the purple warty back. For $60
a person, Adventure Damascus Tours shuttles visitors
from Abingdon to Cleveland, Va., and provides them with
viewing scopes and lunch for the four-hour float trip.
“These are environmentally conscious individuals,
but not necessarily outdoor enthusiasts,” says
Michael Wright, president of Adventure Damascus. “They’re
more in tune with the environment.”
But eco-tourism is not just limited to the state’s
far western mountains. Wright has joined a small group
of eco-tourism providers around the Old Dominion. Eco-tourism
involves traveling to natural areas that are home to
rare plant and animal species and enthralling vistas.
Aficionados interpret the environment without disrupting
the local culture. There are wide varieties of eco-tourism
activities offered in Virginia, from self-guided walking
trails through mountain vistas to eco-safaris in the
Hampton area near Chesapeake Bay. “It goes beyond
just ‘there’s another pretty sight,’”
says Steve Galyean, director of tourism at the Abingdon
Convention and Visitors Bureau. “There’s an
education component.”
The idea of a learning, nature-loving tourist has been
around ever since Ansell Adams started snapping his
breathtaking views of mountain ranges back in the 1940s.
According to the World Tourism Organization, in 1998
eco-tourism and all nature-related forms of tourism
accounted for about 20 percent of all international
travel. During the last decade, Virginia’s coast
picked up on the trend. First Landing Park in Virginia
Beach offers botanical hikes and crabbing programs.
The park sports nesting bald eagles and a large population
of osprey. In Hampton, tourists can take a two-hour
eco-cruise for $16 around Hampton Roads, which includes
reading water temperatures and observing wildlife.
The idea of eco-tourism isn’t new to the area.
In 1997, a program to certify eco-tour guides —
wilderness guides trained in viewing and preserving
wildlife and landscapes —was piloted for Virginia’s
Eastern Shore. Its success led to the recent expansion
of the program throughout the state’s coastal areas.
Eco-tours have become so popular in the coastal areas
that a Virginia Beach and Norfolk taxi cab company,
Andy’s Taxi Group, even transports passengers to
and from the Norfolk airport to Virginia Beach’s
Back Bay Wildlife Preserve, home of several endangered
species such as loggerhead sea turtles, piping plovers,
peregrine falcons and bald eagles. Company owner Andy
Felix says, “We don’t do eco-tours ourselves,
but we see it as a niche market. We’re up on the
Web and lots of people want to go to the Back Bay Wildlife
Refuge.”
Other states jumped on the eco-bandwagon even faster
than Virginia. West Virginia has been offering white-water
rafting for years, and North Carolina’s coast,
Florida and Alaska have made national names for themselves
in the eco-tourism industry. But since eco-tourism is
such a broad term, including even nature trails in some
states, it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine
where Virginia rates in its efforts to cultivate eco-tourism.
With the success of programs on the Eastern shore pointing
the way, though, tourism officials say it is only a
matter of time before Virginia becomes a popular eco-tourism
destination.
While Virginia’s coast is drawing eco-tourists,
the mountainous regions in the state have been slower
to capitalize on the trend. Despite the almost unlimited
supply of natural terrain in the rural mountains, ecological
activities are harder to come by. Abingdon and the close-by
Clinch River Valley are exceptions. With the beauty
of their rugged hills and diverse wildlife, the two
areas could prove to be examples for how state tourism
experts could apply eco-tourism principles in the mountains.
Damascus Adventure provides a successful example for
a small business in Abingdon. Although he refused to
disclose numbers, Wright says business has “grown
leaps and bounds” since the company began offering
eco-tours. Operating for only three years, word of mouth
has spread so fast that by last month, its eco-tour
canoe trips were nearly booked for the fall and not
just by Virginians. “More and more people know
about it,” says Wright. “Some of these people
are making plans way ahead.” The small company
has booked a total of nearly 80 trips up and down the
Clinch River since it began offering the tours.
Eco-tourists, like Wright’s customers, are beginning
to understand what the Clinch River Valley has to offer.
The Nature Conservancy calls its 2,200-square-mile Clinch
Valley Bioreserve that stretches from Virginia into
Tennessee one of the world’s last great places.
And it labels the Virginia portion the most ecologically
diverse region of the state. With more than 400 species
of rare plants and animals — including 22 endangered
species — the area is unlike any in the mid-Atlantic
and much of the U.S.
One lawyer moonlighting as an environmentalist and outdoorsman
has created a passageway for eco-tourists to make the
valley more accessible. Frank Kilgore, chairman of the
Virginia Outdoors Foundation and lawyer at Kilgore and
Chafin, P.C. in St. Paul, established a riverside trail
along the Clinch River and donated it to Wise County.
Although the trail is unguided, Kilgore sees it as a
step to opening the door to eco-tourists thirsty for
nature in the valley. “Eco-tourism is alive and
well,” Kilgore says. “It’s a growing
industry in Southwest Virginia. It’s a very biologically
unique place.”
An advantage to developing the Clinch River Valley is
that it may offer new job opportunities to people in
the Southwest now that coal is declining. Unemployment
in some counties such as Dickenson runs as high as 12
percent as the region tries to reinvent itself during
coal’s gradual demise. Tazewell County, for example,
is trying to arrange tours to see the 49 types of mussels
in its part of the Clinch River.
Soon, though, the state may not have to rely so much
on outdoor enthusiasts like Kilgore and Wright for promoting
eco-tourism. John Shaffer is the director of public
relations for Luray Caverns and a member of the Virginia
Tourism Corp.’s committee to study new ways to
market Virginia as a tourist attraction. Shaffer’s
vision for Virginia’s tourism future includes a
healthy dose of eco-tourism throughout the state. “We
have the basic resources in Virginia,” Shaffer
says. And once word gets out, he hopes, the eco-tourists
will come, explore the state’s wild regions and
prove him right.
