Mergers, expansions, new hires, - oh my

By David Perry

Mergers, expansion, new hires—oh my!

Since 1996, the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy (originally the Western Virginia Land Trust) has focused on the greater Roanoke region. That began to change a few years ago, when we started being asked to hold conservation easements outside the greater Roanoke region, specifically in central and southside Virginia.

We knew our forays beyond the Roanoke area wouldn’t be successful in the long run unless we went about them the right way. We knew we needed community input, and that our land conservation needed to be grounded in the local people, local interests and local needs.

CENTRAL VIRGINIA

Our first step was to begin working with the Central Virginia Land Conservancy in Lynchburg, an all-volunteer land trust that’s been in existence since 2003. Rather than hold conservation easements themselves, the Central Virginia folks had done fine work for years “digging up” conservation projects and referring them to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, Virginia Dept. of Forestry, or, more recently, the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy. Members from our boards met early in 2019 on a conserved farm in Bedford County to have a meet-andgreet, and once we realized we were all of like mind with common goals, the merger process was underway.

Today, the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy operates as the Central Virginia Land Conservancy in Amherst, Appomattox, Buckingham, Campbell and Nelson counties and the City of Lynchburg. We’ve integrated the Central Virginia Land Conservancy’s board into ours, and thanks to funding from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, hope to hire our first Lynchburgbased employee soon.

“CVaLC is thrilled to be part of the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy,” says Wendy Kendrick of Amherst, former board president of the Central Virginia Land Conservancy. “This merger will give landowners more options for easement holders and ultimately we will be protecting more land in this beautiful part of Virginia.”

As in Central Virginia, the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy has been asked in recent years to hold easements and protect land in the Southside counties adjoining our traditional service area. And once again, we knew we needed a community-based approach to do it right.

Thanks to a grant from the Virginia Environmental Endowment, the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy has hired its first employee, Chris Holdren, to work in southside as part of what will become the Southern Virginia Land Conservancy. Working out of Martinsville thanks to a generous donation of office space from

Dr. David Jones, Blue Ridge staff will work closely with our Southside employee to work with landowners and the local community to save land in Patrick, Henry, Pittsylvania and Halifax counties, and the cities of Danville and Martinsville.

Our wonderful board and the support of conservation-minded Virginians makes all this work possible. The end result is more land conserved, faster, to meet the challenges facing our global ecosystem. The answer to so many of the problems facing us is land and land conservation. We hope to provide many more acres of that potent cure in the future. Stay tuned.

James C. “Chris” Holdren

Chris, a native of Bedford, Virginia, is the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy’s new Southern VA Program Manager covering Southside Virginia. Chris has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, with a focus on wildlife biology, from Averett University. Chris loves all things outdoors including hunting, fishing, and hiking. He currently lives in Pittsylvania County with his wife and 10-year-old twins where he raises chocolate Labrador Retrievers.