In December 2024, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation helped the Bonnie family preserve the 138-acre Beaver Dam Farm, a longstanding conservation priority at risk of development near the Village of Unison in Loudoun County. After the Bonnies purchased the farm earlier in the year, VOF secured a Virginia Land Conservation Foundation grant to purchase a conservation easement that maintains the agricultural viability of the farm and protects the historic character of the rural landscape within the Unison Battlefield National Historic District and the Beaverdam Creek Historic Roadways District.

The conservation of Beaver Dam Farm also marked an important milestone in protecting water quality, as conservation of the farm’s nearly half-mile of frontage along Beaverdam Creek provided the last link in a continuous 5-mile corridor of protected lands along the waterway. Beaverdam Creek is a major tributary of Goose Creek, a designated Virginia Scenic River and public drinking water source for Loudoun and Fairfax counties. With the landowners and VOF expanding the conservation corridor, the preservation of Beaver Dam Farm reflects our shared progress in ensuring our waters are clean and plentiful in the future.

The Bonnie family’s decision to purchase and preserve Beaver Dam Farm brings to a happy close efforts by local residents and The Piedmont Environmental Council — stretching back at least 20 years — to find a conservation outcome for the farm. The preservation of the farm also represents another step forward in achieving PEC’s goal of helping landowners conserve at least 125,000 acres, or 50% of the land in the Goose Creek watershed. To date, more than 110,000 acres, roughly 44% of the Goose Creek watershed — an area more than 2.5 times the size of Washington, D.C. — have been permanently protected through public and private land conservation.

This article appeared in the 2025 Spring edition of The Piedmont Environmental Council’s member newsletter, The Piedmont View. If you’d like to become a PEC member or renew your membership, please visit pecva.org/join.