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II. PRE SENTLY PROTECTED AND PRESERVED LANDS 



About 941 square miles or over one-half million acres (just over 

 240,000 hectares) of land is presently protected in the Chesapeake 

 Bay region by virtue of being owned either privately or by the federal 

 or state governments. These lands may be subject to a variety of human 

 activities from landing airplanes to lumbering, fishing, hunting or 

 intense recreational uses. So, while they are not subject to unplanned, 

 market-dominated real estate development, they are also not necessarily 

 preserved in any true sense. In our opinion, these lands should be ana- 

 lyzed in greater depth and ranked according to the ecological criteria 

 set forth in this report. Those found of prime value should then be so 

 designated and action should be taken to change their management status 

 to assure their protection in perpetuity. Such an analysis was not 

 within the scope of this survey, on the grounds that these lands are, 

 at the very least, protected from development and thus not as threatened 

 as the others that formed the bulk of the survey. 



A number of areas within the region are preserved, in the sense 

 that damaging use or development is largely ruled out. These include 

 seven National Wildlife Refuges plus seventeen other areas, some of 

 them state parks or refuges and others being privately owned, (and 

 listed in published reports as natural areas, research natural areas 

 or natural landmarks). 



None of these protected or preserved areas were actively investi- 

 gated by us. They were, however, depicted on a 1:250,000 scale map 

 with appropriate coding to show different categories of ownership and 



