Bob Lazaro
PEC Director of Communications
571.225.0198

Approximately 3000 Acres Conserved in Albemarle County in 2008
Now Over 75,000 Total Acres Protected

The Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) and the County of Albemarle are pleased to announce that landowners in Albemarle County protected almost 3,000 acres of land in 2008 by placing their land in conservation easements, insuring that over 16% of the county's rural area is permanently protected (map attached).

Rex Linville of the Piedmont Environmental Council says, "Landowners in Albemarle County have been the driving force behind the preservation of a remarkable number of important natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources. None of this success would have been possible without the conservation ethic of these private landowners, the public resources going into tax incentives for conservation easement donors, and the financial resources that Albemarle County puts into the ACE program for purchased conservation easements."

Ann Mallek, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors member says, "We appreciate how our citizens have protected resources by using conservation easements, which is a critical strategy for rural area preservation. We look forward to working closely with our local partners in the upcoming year to encourage people to consider conservation easements, and will be looking closely at how we can continue to support the ACE program in these challenging economic times."

Here are some examples of key easement success stories in 2008:

- A Virginia Outdoors Foundation project was the protection of over 1,100 acres of forest land on Fox Mountain in northwestern Albemarle County.
- The Piedmont Environmental Council worked with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation to protect 150 acres on Jefferson's Montalto.
- Three important farmland properties totaling 630 acres were protected with purchased easements funded by Albemarle County though the Acquisition of Conservation Easements (ACE) Program.
- Three donated conservation easements went to the Public Recreational Facilities Authority of Albemarle County, an independent entity created by the County for the purpose of holding conservation easements
- Grants totaling $970,000 were obtained by Albemarle County to supplement general fund support for the ACE program.

Easements on about half of the nearly 3000 acres protected in Albemarle last year are held by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF), a state agency entrusted with upholding the vast majority of easements in Virginia.

One of the outstanding ACE achievements in Albemarle County last year was the protection of Strawberry Hill Farm, Michael and Sylvia Dowell's 330 acre working family farm along the Scenic Byway Route 231 in the Southwest Mountains Rural Historic District. Michael Dowell, said, "My dad, W.E. Dowell, and his two brothers worked hard to buy the homeplace and before Dad passed away, he wanted to make sure it would stay as a farm, so to me a conservation easement was an important way to keep his vision for the property alive."

Strawberry Hill Farm joins more than 15,000 acres of private conservation land in the Southwest Mountains Rural Historic District and more than 75,000 acres of private conservation land in Albemarle County. Now, over 41% of the Southwest Mountains Historic District is protected by conservation easements while 16% of Albemarle County's rural area is protected.

The Dowells worked through local and state conservation programs to protect the property. Because of the land's high conservation value, Albemarle County's Acquisition of Conservation Easement (ACE) Program and the Virginia Outdoors Foundation's Preservation Trust Fund each provided 50% of the funds to purchase an easement on the property. The conservation easement on Strawberry Hill permanently protects approximately 200 acres of prime agricultural soil, preserves over half a mile of scenic frontage on a County Entrance Corridor, and eliminates 16 development rights.

In the nine-county region that PEC serves, from Albemarle to Loudoun, over 300,000 acres have been protected with conservation easements -- an area that is approximately one and a half times the size of Shenandoah National Park. PEC facilitates this extraordinary level of private land conservation by working with landowners on an individual basis, educating communities, building support for local initiatives like Albemarle's Acquisition of Conservation Easements (ACE) program, and advocating for strong state and federal conservation incentives.

A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement that permanently protects a property's natural and cultural resources, even as the land remains in private ownership. Because landowners who donate an easement are sacrificing value by limiting development rights, they are eligible for significant state and federal income tax benefits as well as estate tax benefits. In Virginia, conservation easements must fulfill public goals that are expressed through local Comprehensive Plans -- ensuring that the actions of individual landowners result in real benefits to the community.

For More Information about land conservation in Albemarle you can contact Rex Linville, Land County Conservation Officer, Piedmont Environmental Council, (434) 977-2033, or Lee Catlin, Albemarle County Community Relations Director, (434) 296-5841.