February 27, 2014
How Disney Inspired the MFHA Conservation Award
It was the Disney Company that inspired the creation of the Chronicle of the Horse/MFHA Conservation Award, but for the wrong reasons!
And it’s most fitting that George Ohrstrom III was presented with the Conservation Award at the 2014 annual meeting of the MFHA, for he is connected through his family to the genesis of the award. Ohrstrom currently serves as co-chairman of the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), the respected and influential Virginia-based conservation organization that the Ohrstrom family was instrumental in forming in the 1970s.
The PEC gained national attention when they demonstrated how local grassroots efforts—combined with a clever strategy of enlisting the support of the nation’s most prominent historians—defeated the Disney Company’s efforts to build a theme park in Virginia’s historic countryside in the fall of 1994. At the time the PEC went to war, Disney had already quietly amassed political support in the Virginia legislature, had seduced the local Chambers of Commerce and real estate boards, and had secured the rights and promises of approval to the land they wanted, on the eastern border of some of Virginia’s prime foxhunting country.
Phase-Out of Fox Pens One Step Closer in VA
A plan to phase out fox pens in the Commonwealth over a forty-year period was endorsed by the Agricultural Committee of the Virginia House of Delegates yesterday. The Richmond Times-Dispatch characterized the 18-3 vote as significant, since the House has traditionally been more reluctant than the Senate to interfere with foxhound training pens. Under the approved plan, fox pens would be allowed to continue to operate for the next forty years, but no new pens would be allowed to open. Foxhound training pens are used by many hunts around the country as a part of their puppy training program. The pens are also used by individuals who simply enjoy running their hounds. Foxes are provided with refuges within the pen to allow them to escape hounds when pressed. There are rules that limit the number of hounds that may be in a pen at any one time. In addition to the use of fox pens for training, pens have also been used for foxhound field trials. Last year the Virginia Senate banned competition in fox pens. The state of Florida has already banned the operation of fox pens. Posted February 27, 2014
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George L. Ohrstrom III Wins MFHA Award
George L. Ohrstrom III / Matthew Klein photoEver since 1888, the Blue Ridge Hunt has pursued foxes through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia—a verdant, rolling grassland dotted with small woodlands, perhaps fifteen miles across, nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east and the Allegheny Mountains to the west.
The Shenandoah River flows northeasterly along the eastern edge of the valley, passes under the western slopes of the Blue Ridge, and empties into the Potomac River at Harper’s Ferry, W.Va.—a confluence described three centuries ago by Thomas Jefferson as “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.”
Home to a mostly rural population, the Shenandoah Valley has long been a destination of unsurpassed beauty to vacationers and sightseers. The northern part of the Valley that is home to the Blue Ridge Hunt also finds itself to be an object of lust to developers from Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia to the east and the nearby city of Winchester to the west. While many landowners find it hard to resist the potential financial windfall from development, others believe that to relinquish such natural beauty to untrammeled development would be a crime against nature.
Along with its sister landscape just to the east of the Blue Ridge—Virginia’s Piedmont—a passionate calling for preservation has rallied many of its citizens to battle. Few, however, have responded like George Ohrstrom III. The scope and creativity of Ohrstrom’s efforts locally, nationally, and internationally earned him the MFHA’s Conservation Award for 2014.
