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their land, which lightens their tax burden.
In Albemarle, Clarke, and Fauquier, working farms received money from publicly supported Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) programs. John Schied, who serves as Chairmar of the Review Committee for Fauquier’s PDR program, said, “some of the guys in the PDR program, if they weren’t in the program, would be at risk of losing their land.”
A PDR program in Rappahannock received binding to begin conserving properties in 2005.
The time-honored work of farming and the open, pastoral landscape that results from it support an industry that has been burgeoning recently in the Piedmont. Between 1990 and 2000, travelers’ spending in Piedmont counties increased by an average of 283 percent. If the region is to continue benefiting from this influx of money, it cannot allow the landscape that attracts tourists to be converted into housing developments, strip malls, and sheets of asphalt.
“Conservation easements help us to take care of many of the things that people in this region care about the most,” added Larson.
Among the most significant properties to be conserved in 2004 were three tracts that are vitally important for historic reasons: the Mine Rim Battlefield in Orange, a thousand acres of the Monticello plantation in Albemarle and Ben Venue, a historic landmark farm of 1,885 acres in Rappahannock County Landowners in Fauquier County led the region last year, using easements to protect 8,264 acres. Other totals were 6,753 acres in Albemarle, 4,121 acres in Rappahannock, 1,635 acres in Loudoun, 997 acres in Clarke, 769 acres in Orange, 606 acres -in Madison, 585 in Greene, and 60 acres in Culpeper.
Information provided by the Piedmont Environmental Council. Contact Chris Miller at (540) 347-2334, Ext. 13.
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