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By Don Del Rosso
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
The numbers boggle the mind.
Development annually gobbles 20,000 acres of “prime’’ agricultural and more than 40,000 acres of forest in Virginia.
“That means about every three and a half years an area of the size of Prince William County is developed,” David Phemister, The Nature Conservancy’s director of government relations, told the Times Community Newspapers editorial board last Friday. Times Community Newspapers includes the Fauquier Times-Democrat and more than a dozen other newspapers in the Piedmont and Northern Virginia.
Despite the sluggish new-home market, which most observers consider temporary, there appears no discernible end in sight to the pace at which growth consumes unspoiled land in the commonwealth.
With the clock ticking, the global organization believes the state quickly must step in and commit massive amounts of money to protect valuable farmland and forest.
Phemister and Ridge Schuyler, who directs the conservancy’s Piedmont program, gave a 90minute overview of the Arlington-based organization’s, goals, objectives and accomplishments at
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