Donation to Nature Conservancy Protects Nearly 1,600 Acres in Albemarle County

Protection of historic Castle Hill farm contributes to county’s rural preservation efforts and provides demonstration site for Conservancy’s old-growth-forestry program

Charlottesville, Virginia — The Nature Conservancy received a donation that will protect a 1,581-acre property, known as Castle Hill, located in the Southwest Mountains of Albemarle County.

The gift consists of a conservation easement donation on 1,203 acres and a donation of 345 acres of land from Route 231 LLC. The Conservancy also received an additional gift of 33 acres of land from a neighboring landowner. As the new Walnut Mountain Preserve, the combined 378-acre property will serve as the launch site for the Conservancy’s old-growth-forest restoration program in the Piedmont.

In addition, the landowners donated a conservation easement to Albemarle County on the 378 acres of land they gave to The Nature Conservancy. Both the Conservancy easement and the county easement add to the protection of rural lands in Albemarle by eliminating 83 development rights, while allowing the Conservancy to restore the health of the forest.

“In many cultures, forests serve as places of refuge, reverence and mystery,” said Ridge Schuyler, director of the Conservancy’s Piedmont Program. “Here in Virginia, forests also serve as a substantial economic resource. But because of overharvesting, disease and development pressures, many of our forests in Virginia are quite young—less than 100 years old.”

“We have few examples of the wild forests of old in Virginia,” Schuyler said. “This acquisition, however, moves us toward restoring ecological balance and improving the composition and growth of native hardwood forests.”

This project also dovetails with the Conservancy’s ongoing work in the Piedmont to protect water resources. The Conservancy is working to protect the Rivanna through preserving forests and riparian buffers, restoring streams, retiring development rights and developing science-based strategies for maintaining both the natural flows of waterways and drinking water for people.

The region’s forests have survived many disturbances, although invasive pests and logging practices have changed their composition. Development pressures in the Rivanna watershed also have affected the area’s forests. Many forests have been cut into fragments, destroying wildlife habitat and weakening the natural buffers that keep sediment and pollution from entering waterways.

Castle Hill will serve as a demonstration site for restoring old growth forests to the Piedmont. As a first step, under the direction of Jean Lorber, the Piedmont Program’s forest protection specialist, the Conservancy will remove non-native and poorly formed trees, providing space and light to stimulate new growth.

“Sadly, there are only a few patches of forest left in the Piedmont with old-growth characteristics,” Lorber said. “We are determined to change that. Our goal is a healthy native forest that has as much diversity as possible.”

Doctor Thomas Walker built Castle Hill in 1764. Castle Hill was the plantation home of William Cabell Rives, a lawyer, diplomat and politician born in Nelson County. After studying at the College of William and Mary, Rives studied law with Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. He also was a friend and biographer of James Madison.

Rives moved to Castle Hill when he married Doctor Walker’s granddaughter, Judith Page Walker, who had inherited the property. Rives served in Virginia’s state constitutional convention in 1816 after he gave a rousing speech about the underrepresentation of the western counties in Virginia. He then served in the Virginia House of Delegates—for both Nelson and Albemarle counties. Later he was elected to several terms in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He served twice as minister to France. Rives was part of an effort to avert the Civil War, but eventually served in the congress of the Confederacy. He died in 1868 at age 74 at Castle Hill and is buried there in a family plot.

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The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its nearly one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 14 million acres in the United States—including more than 220,000 acres in Virginia—and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit us on the Web at nature.org/virginia.