Virginia: 2nd most successful year in conservation easements in Piedmont in 2008
Bob Lee, the Executive Director of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) said, “VOF had its second best year in 2008 in terms of conservation easement acreage – 64,840 acres in 64 localities. This land conservation movement that was incubated in the nine-county PEC region has now expanded throughout Virginia. VOF has done more land conservation in the last four years, since 2004, than was accomplished in the previous 38 years. VOF now has over 525,000 acres under permanent conservation protection.”
The PEC coordination model with VOF has now spread to other land trusts and conservation organizations throughout Virginia. Today, VOF holds easements in 102 cities and counties. In 2008 residents of the Piedmont permanently protected 14,100 acres of open space through the use of conservation easements. More than 300,000 acres of land are now conserved in the nine-county Piedmont region.
The movement to protect privately-held rural land from development has been experiencing tremendous momentum in Virginia’s Piedmont region, with landowners conserving an average of 23,714 acres every year for the last five years. The total for 2008 brings the number of acres conserved in the nine counties served by the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) to 307,464 acres, an acreage that is larger than Shenandoah National Park. “We’re immensely pleased at what communities in the Piedmont have been able to accomplish to provide a legacy of conserved open space for our children and future generations,” says Chris Miller, President of PEC.
“When it comes to conservation, this is one of the most successful regions in the entire country.” The Piedmont region continues to lead the state of Virginia, which is among the top five states in the nation for protecting land through private conservation easements. The nine counties of Virginia’s Piedmont—including Loudoun, Clarke, Fauquier, Culpeper, Rappahannock, Madison, Orange, Greene, and Albemarle—have conserved more land than almost any state in the nation.
