More than 4,000 acres adjacent to Shenandoah National Park will now be protected under a conservation easement. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The Southern Shenandoah Borderlands Project recently got $7 million in federal funding to protect this land through the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy program.
GWEN MASON: It's a conservation program which is administered by the U.S. Forest Service, but we work in partnership with state agencies to encourage the protection of privately owned forest lands through conservation easements or land purchases. … A conservation easement is a perpetual legal agreement written as a deed, so it protects land in perpetuity.
Gwen Mason is the public affairs officer for the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest. The land included in the project is made up of four tracts between Waynesboro and Crozet, each abutting the national park.
MASON: One of which is municipal – it's the Sugar Hollow tract owned by the city of Charlottesville … and three privately owned tracts large enough to contain multiple mountain peaks and ridges in the viewshed of Skyline Drive and Interstate 64. And this project will allow us in the forest service to sustain our forest management on these four tracts, but it strictly curtails development.
The Forest Service collaborated on this initiative with the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Virginia Department of Forestry.
