QUEENSTOWN -- The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy is one of those groups you often hear mentioned around the Chesapeake Bay region as a bona fide environmental success story.

Since its founding in 1990, the private, nonprofit land conservation organization has preserved an average of about 12 farms a year -- about 31,000 acres altogether -- and is pushing toward a goal of 81,000 acres by the end of this decade.

And yet, says the conservancy's director, Rob Etgen, "All around us, we see these continuing big losses of farmland." The six Eastern Shore counties where his group focuses have lost 52,000 acres in the past 20 years.

"It's not quite as bad as fiddling while Rome burns," he says, "but we're not having the broad impact we need to preserve the traditional Shore landscape."

The goal is not going to happen, Etgen and the conservancy now think, so long as planning and zoning among Shore counties continue favoring sprawl development.

Etgen praises local planning and zoning agencies for working hard, often without enough funding or political support, to make reality correspond to the nice-looking county plans that show growth occurring around towns and other planned growth areas.

But most Shore counties continue, he says, to see more than half of all new houses built outside of preferred growth areas.

This and other recent examples are enough to make citizens wonder whether "our democratic system for making land use decisions is truly broken," Etgen wrote in a recent conservancy newsletter.

He noted a big-box store that was asked to scale down by Easton town planners to be compatible with the community. The store relocated on open land outside town, where Talbot County rules did not limit it.

In Queen Anne's County, 20 percent of registered voters, concerned about growth, signed a petition to send a major decision on a 1,400-unit development to referendum. The petition was thrown out on a technicality.

There has to be a better way, figured Etgen and the conservancy, whose board of farmers, environmentalists, scientists and landowners is headed by former Gov. Harry R. Hughes.

Taking a more activist bent, they have developed Eastern Shore 2010, a regional vision for land use that they are attempting to get all six mid- and upper-Shore counties (Dorchester to Cecil) to endorse before next fall's elections. Hughes and Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest are heading this effort.

It is accompanied by a poll of 1,500 citizens randomly selected from the six counties by Mason Dixon Polling and Research.

I take environmental polls with a grain of salt because I think some people answer what they know they ought to, as opposed to what they'll support when push comes to shove.

Even so, the results show the conservancy is on track in thinking there must be a better way when it comes to land use.

A whopping 72 percent of citizens polled said the Shore's environment, natural resources and beauty contributed most to their quality of life. Jobs and education were each ranked first by less than 10 percent.

Asked the most important issue facing their counties, 44 percent said managing growth and protecting the environment. Jobs and the economy came in a distant second with 15 percent.

While 85 percent rated their quality of life as high, 70 percent said they expected it to deteriorate if current rates and patterns of growth continued.

And when asked to rate their county government in curbing sprawl and protecting the quality of life, 67 percent said fair to poor (32 percent said good to excellent).

Among the counties, the "fair to poor" rating varied, from Kent County, best at 56 percent, to Queen Anne's and Cecil, worst at 70 percent and 71 percent.

Even with my grain of salt, it's clear citizens love the Shore's traditional mix of small towns and rural or agricultural open space; they see it slipping away, and they think local government's not stopping it.

It's also clear voters would support Shore counties signing the voluntary, regional vision drafted by the conservancy. It pledges to steer at least half of new development into locally designated growth areas by 2005, and to protect half of all lands outside growth areas by 2010.

For Shore residents (including myself), it's easy to look across the bay at the crowded Western Shore and say we've got plenty of time to get our act together.

But land speculation and subdivision set patterns for development decades before houses erupt, and the patterns are nearly impossible to undo.

If you wonder where land-use trends will land the Eastern Shore, I can show you.

The day will come when The Sun refers to the Maryland portion of the Delmarva Peninsula in lowercase letters. Nothing special.

The eastern shore.