A little east of Front Royal, the Piedmont Memorial Overlook offers stunning views near Sky Meadows State Park. WMRA’s Ayse Pirge took a tour.
The property of about 1400 acres was purchased by the Piedmont Environmental Council, or PEC, in 2000 with help from foundations, as well as some local families. Restoration efforts for the meadow began in 2012, and now the land is home to a range of wildlife, including redheaded woodpeckers and yellow breasted chats.
October Greenfield is PEC’s wildlife habitat restoration coordinator.
OCTOBER GREENFIELD: … Sky Meadows, most of their open areas is grasses rather than wildflowers like this. So, having this 16 acres up here with such a long period of different blooms is really, really fantastic habitat for all sorts of critters.
Council President Chris Miller says the organization transferred 450 acres to the National Park Service, while most of the rest of the land is in the conservation easement.
GREENFIELD: …You can see all the way to Tysons and Reston. You can actually see the skyline of the buildings out there.
I asked Greenfield about future projects for the memorial overlook.
GREENFIELD: … We definitely want to do more outreach and education events up here. So, we are kind of in the process of planning things for later this summer and then into the fall, and being able to kind of repeat those year after year and kind of incorporate some new things as well as continued management of the Meadow, doing prescribed burns and doing some bush hogging at times that will be less destructive to wildlife.
The PEC staff oversees conservation efforts in nine counties in the northern Piedmont, including the city of Charlottesville. They also partner with local organizations in the Shenandoah Valley, among other places. PEC also conducts biodiversity surveys in partnership with Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes.
