The national and state park systems are an amazing national resource. They provide opportunities for the people of our nation to experience nature and wildlife in all their natural glory. But private preserves have a long history as well.

The Nature Conservancy, a charitable group dedicated to, among other things, buying private wild lands and placing them in trust to ensure the preservation of wildlife and resources, has recently made a large purchase in southern Ohio.

Its purchase of the Gaffin family land near Rome helps extend its Edge of Appalachia preserve, and continues its goal of creating an uninterrupted wildlife corridor along the Ohio River. Their goal is also to extend the preserve from the areas near West Union to near Portsmouth, where some of the preserve already abuts the Shawnee State Forest.

We commend the Nature Conservancy for its efforts in using privately donated resources to continue the goal of preserving our collective national heritage. State and national parks and lands are important, but as other commercial projects have shown us, sometimes the private sector, or private-public partnerships, can go a long way to extending the promise of the public sector.

Every dollar spent by the Nature Conservancy protecting land is another dollar the public sector can use to focus on improving the lands they already hold, and, in the end, everyone wins — The landowners, the park system, the recreational outdoorsperson and the plants and animals that call our forests home.