Bob Lazaro
PEC Director of Communications
571.225.0198

548 Acres Conserved in Madison County for 2008
Over 300,000 Acres Conserved in Piedmont

In 2008, residents of the Piedmont protected 14100 acres of open space through the use of conservation easements. In Madison County, 548 acres were preserved in 2008 bringing the grand total of more than 10365 acres of privately conserved land in the County (map attached).

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 307464 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 heritage of what we give our children is not in the parceling of land being divided up for monetary value, but in the beauty and strength of character that the land produces in each of us who have lived on it. This is what we wish to pass on, and it can only be accomplished by preserving our property as a whole," said Keith and Diane Wagner who donated an easement on their 149 acre farm.

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.

PEC's Director of Land Conservation, Heather Richards says, "The tremendous gains we've seen in conservation over the last few years reflect the growing awareness among Madison's residents of the importance of their landscape. Conserving green spaces does more than just protecting pretty views. It protects drinking water and air quality, reduces traffic, keeps taxes down and preserves family farms. These benefits are explicitly recognized in Madison County's Comprehensive Plan."

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 - this represents an area more than half as large as the state of Rhode Island. 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."

According to a 2003 study that was done by the American Farmland Trust in Culpeper County, farms and other open lands use only $0.32 in local services for every dollar of taxes paid, while homes require $1.22 for every dollar paid. Land placed under permanent easement also lowers the value used by the state to determine local ability to pay, which results in increased funding from the Commonwealth for schools and other county services.

Easements also support two major industries of the Piedmont: agriculture and tourism. Like other landowners, farmers can gain needed capital by voluntarily conserving their land and earning a substantial state tax credit which they may either use or sell on the open market. Farmers also benefit from reduced appraisal values on their land, which lightens their tax burden. In Albemarle, Clarke, and Fauquier counties, working farms also have the option of receiving money from publicly supported Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) programs.

"Protecting the rural landscape is more than preserving the view; it's keeping farmland growing food, forests growing trees, and birds and wildlife alive in balance with humans. We all benefit when income from farms, forests and tourism stays in Madison County and the people who live here can actually make a living here too. Conservation preserves a quality way of life; it helps safeguard our local community. Voluntary land conservation is a highly motivated, generous and deliberate act to preserve the foundation of our local way of life." said Beth Pastore, PEC's Land Conservation Officer for Madison County.

For information about land conservation in Madison you can contact Beth Pastore at (540) 948-3854 or via email bpastore[at]pecva.org.