Weathered barns, historic buildings, forested rolling green hills and pastoral open fields with large bales of hay—this is the view surrounding the intersection of Routes 15 and 50 in Loudoun County, known by many as Gilberts Corner.
Conserving Your Land
Find out more about permanently protecting your land with a Conservation Easement.
Fracking and Conservation Easements?
Not a Good Fit
Next week, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF), a public agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the state's largest holder of conservation easements, will be reviewing a number of new properties for potential protection. Several of the easements they'll be considering would explicitly permit drilling for oil and gas, including the use of hydraulic fracturing, in areas that have little to no history of drilling.
Allowing this type of industrial mineral extraction on land that has been permanently protected with a conservation easement is contrary to the purpose of most easements.
Ask VOF to Take a Second Look
From the Field: PEC’s Piedmont Memorial Overlook
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.
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.
Who Accepts Conservation Easements / How Do I Get Started?
Choosing the right organization is essential for you and your property.
Why Should I Donate a Conservation Easement?
Your land matters to you and future generations.
What Are the Public Benefits of Conservation Easements?
Protection of clean air, water, productive farms and forests, historic resources, wildlife habitat and more.
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.”