To most eyes, the proliferation of housing that is sweeping across what used to be hillsides and farm acreage in the Inland Northwest is known as development.

In fact, however, it is a race, or at least one half of a race. And if the phrase “Near nature, near perfect” is to be more than a target for mockery, those who reside here need to hope that the race is competitive. We should be pulling for a tie.

In one lane are the home builders, swallowing up real estate, laying down infrastructure – excavating, framing, finishing and landscaping. How else are the residents who are drawn to such an attractive area to capitalize on being so near a stunning, nay perfect, natural setting?

In the other lane are the conservation activists, laboring less conspicuously but more passionately, making a contribution that is equally needed. Through an admirable combination of government and non-profit programs, individual dedication and some astonishing demonstrations of personal selflessness, valuable lands are being set aside – the “nature” everyone wants to be near – to assure that the region’s quality of life won’t be paved under.

One of the most recent examples was detailed last weekend in an article by Spokesman-Review reporter James Hagengruber, who told of the considerable financial gesture made by a family named Wiltzius. The 680 acres their grandpa sweated for on Peone Prairie is worth millions now, but they sold development rights to 100 acres along Deadman Creek for a song – and not just figuratively. It was acquired to protect the habitat of birds and other wildlife, part of a corridor that conservationists are trying to secure between Mount Spokane and the Little Spokane River. The acquisition adds another mile of creek bed to the wetlands already incorporated in the so-called Feryn Conservation Area, also made possible because a conscientious landowner was willing to resist the cash-register potential of her property in the interest of natural preservation.

In recent months, as the hammers and saws play their own relentless melody, impressive headway has been made in reserving special lands so the occupants who move into the aggregation of new housing will still have a near-perfect aspect to their community. Locations like geologically significant Big Rock near the Dishman Hills Natural Area and Antoine Peak, an impressive elk and moose habitat that constitutes the biggest purchase in the history of Spokane County’s Conservation Futures Program.

Left to their own devices, developers will gobble up every vista, commandeer every sunset, and convert them into profit. That’s not inherently bad. A prosperous community needs a mix of residential opportunities that will appeal to a mixture of tastes and pocketbooks.

But even when well-designed land-use policies impose a reasonable and necessary rein on the dozers and excavators, it takes the energy and creativity of underfunded but dedicated conservationists – coupled with idealistic property owners – to make the housing worth having.

In a race that’s called a dead heat. In the realm of public policy it’s called balance.