The Nature Conservancy Opens Office in Warm Springs
Brad Kreps named director of Allegheny Highlands Program
Warm Springs, Virginia—14 September 2004—The Nature Conservancy announced today that Brad Kreps has been named director of its Allegheny Highlands Program. Kreps will manage Warm Springs Mountain Preserve and other conservation projects in Bath and Highland counties. The new program office is located in Warm Springs, Virginia.
Kreps served for the past three years on the staff of the Conservancy’s Clinch Valley Program in southwestern Virginia, an area geographically similar to the Allegheny Highlands. In the Clinch Valley, Kreps worked with local communities, landowners and various organizations and agencies to establish partnerships that are mutually beneficial to the Conservancy and local people. As conservation planning associate, Kreps sought to advance conservation goals such as protecting forest habitats and enhancing water quality for imperiled freshwater mussels, while also supporting compatible land uses that sustain local communities. Kreps, a native of southeastern Virginia, has lived in the Appalachians for more than a decade and is eager to assume leadership of a community-based conservation program in the region.
“I have a passion for the landscapes and the people of the Appalachian Mountains, and both the scenic beauty and natural diversity here in Bath and Highland counties are particularly inspiring to me,” Kreps said. “Virtually in our backyard we have some of the finest remaining forest habitat in the eastern United States.”
Linda Crowe, the Conservancy’s director of land protection in Charlottesville, had served as interim director for the Allegheny Highlands Program since negotiating the purchase of Warm Springs Mountain Preserve in 2002. Through its conservation planning process, the Conservancy identified the 9,200-acre Warm Springs Mountain property as one of the largest and most biologically significant blocks of privately-owned forest in the Central Appalachians.
The Conservancy is working to make Warm Springs Mountain a platform site for demonstrating the urgent need to control garlic mustard and other invasive species. The Conservancy also recently opened a 1.2-mile interpretive nature trail on the mountain. The trail begins from the Dan Ingalls Overlook on Route 39, just outside Warm Springs.
Allegheny Highlands Program to Host Holiday Open House on December 3, 2004
Open House Info
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