Land Conservancy Wins $20k Grant from Virginia Environmental Endowment for Community Conservation

Warsaw, VA- Virginia Environmental Endowment (VEE) awarded a $20,000 grant this month to Northern Neck Land Conservancy for an initiative they call Promoting Conservation and Inspiring a Regional Community of Land Protectors. The grant support will allow the Land Conservancy to begin work on several outreach events, as well as bolster staffing potential to foster a conservation community that values and will take action to protect regional land.

The five counties of the Northern Neck and Essex County contain large stretches of high priority wildlife biodiversity resilience corridors according to the 2023 Virginia Wildlife Corridor Action Plan. This grant will allow the Land Conservancy to increase efforts to protect these lands, wildlife, and natural habitats through staffing prioritization and focused landowner outreach.

While the Northern Neck is “off the beaten path,” pressures to develop the region have been on the rise. Data center facilities, solar energy farms, and housing developments have all become more common namely due to urban to rural migration. The large, flat, sunny farm fields that characterize the idyllic region are attractive for such development.

The NNLC seeks to use this grant to increase private land conservation of farmlands, woodlands, and wetlands that are essential to the Northern Neck’s rural character from these larger development projects and others in the future, as well as to increase capacity to communicate and connect with the public and key stakeholders.

To learn more about VEE’s grant efforts across Virginia and about the work of past grant recipients visit their website at https://www.vee.org/