The first two steps in land management are to assess what condition the land is in and then decide what your goals are. PEC is going through both of these steps at the Piedmont Memorial Overlook—our 50-acre tract that straddles Clarke and Fauquier county.
Conservation Case Studies
Category to drop feature articles about conservation success stories.
Forty Years of Conservation
Hope Porter and Sue Scheer have been fighting to protect rural land for decades. It was in the late 1940s that Porter and her husband realized what the post-war surge in automobile ownership and long-distance commuting could mean for Fauquier County, their home—unless people stood up to protect the countryside. Together with a few likeminded neighbors, they worked to establish the county’s first zoning, when any kind of land use planning was still a rarity.
1,000 Acres of Jefferson County Preserved
Members of the Carter family acted together in 2009 to protect nearly 1,000 acres of land in Albemarle County that has been in their family since 1730. The Carters’ ancestors were neighbors to the Jeffersons, with a plantation about seven miles from Monticello, and the 1792 home, Redlands, suggests a Jeffersonian influence. The house was built by Martin Thacker, who also built Monticello, and its plan resembles Thomas Jefferson’s unbuilt design for the Virginia governor’s mansion.
Protecting the Cedar Run Watershed
When Mike and Margrete Stevens first came to Fauquier County eighteen years ago, as the new owners of Bonny Brook Farm, near Warrenton, they made friends with their neighbors Julian and Sue Scheer and Hilary and Rich Gerhardt (the Scheers’ daughter and son-in-law). This friendship with a family of dedicated conservationists led the Stevens to start hosting a wildflower walk on their land each April, as a sky-colored carpet of Virginia Bluebells blossoms along Cedar Run.
Giving Back
Jean Scott, 82, of Culpeper County placed her 118-acre tract of land on the Hazel River into a permanent conservation easement in 2010. Mrs. Scott’s donation will be an enduring legacy of conservation; a testament to the value of Virginia’s natural spaces. Yet, if you ask Mrs. Scott if she considers herself an environmentalist, she will chuckle and, almost bashfully, say, “Well, no. I don’t think so.”
Cows, Not Condos
Bev McKay's family has been farming the land that he just protected in Clarke County for over 200 years. Mr. McKay raises dairy cattle on the property, as well as crops, such as corn and barley, to feed the cows.
The land is good for farming, with gently rolling fields and rich loam soils. Because of its value as productive farmland, the USDA and PEC worked together to purchase an easement on 103 acres, over half of which are prime agricultural soils.