Our Virginia: 2021 Impact Report

What do our own beloved Appalachian Mountains have in common with the rainforests of Borneo and the Amazon? Or with the rolling, wildlife-rich grasslands of Kenya?

All of these places are home to an extraordinary diversity of life. All are critical to shoring up the resilience of nature and people in the face of a changing climate. All are proving grounds for innovative conservation. And, consequently, all are now designated top global priorities for The Nature Conservancy.

Virginia has played a leading role in elevating the Appalachians. More than 30 years ago, our Clinch Valley Program began as a one-person operation based in Abingdon. It was ambitious—or naive, some might say—attempting to protect river systems that encompass a swath of Appalachia larger than the state of Delaware.

But we trusted where the science was leading us, and that was to the Appalachian rivers harboring the most diverse, most imperiled collection of aquatic wildlife on the continent. As our program grew, we made the then-radical leap of expanding across state lines.

By 2019, our pioneering Conservation Forestry Program and successful entry into carbon markets had made it possible to attract impact investments on a whole new scale. Today, through our Cumberland Forest Project, TNC intends to conserve over a quarter-million acres across Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

As a global priority, our ancient Appalachians are once again on the rise. Whether it’s funding from generous supporters like you or organization-wide expertise, The Nature Conservancy is committing resources to a range-wide collaboration spanning Alabama to Canada. Thank you for supporting this vital conservation mission and helping Virginia lead the charge.

In July 2021, TNC and UVA Wise announced the first group of grant recipients for the Cumberland Forest Community Fund. The Cumberland Forest Limited Partnership provided funding for this new local grant program, which supports nature-based economic and community development in seven southwest Virginia counties.

“This first set of funded projects will connect people to nature while contributing to economic diversification and community development in Virginia’s coalfields region,” says Kreps. “We couldn’t be happier with UVA Wise as our partner and program manager for the Cumberland Forest Community Fund.” Through a similar partnership with the Clinch-Powell RC&D, the program has funded seven additional community projects in Tennessee.

Virginia’s last native elk was killed in 1855. After Kentucky began successfully reintroducing elk in 1997, animals began roaming into southwest Virginia. In 2012, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation began capturing elk from Kentucky for release onto a former mining site in Buchanan County, Virginia.

TNC purchased this core elk restoration site in March 2021 as part of a 1,100-acre acquisition made possible by our supporters, including the Worrell family and Genan Foundation, and by a generous matching-gift challenge from the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation. The reclaimed mineland features open meadows surrounded by shady forest. Here, Virginia’s elk herds—now numbering some 250 animals—can alternately graze or seek cover depending on the time of day. 

TNC’s new elk preserve remains central to ongoing restoration and ecotourism partnerships. TNC is working with members of the SWVA Sportsmen and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to maintain a number of wildlife viewing stations. The most reliable times for elk watching are during the spring calving season and the fall rut, when the sound of bugling rings out in the crisp air as bulls compete to corral the cows.

Breaks Interstate Park on the Virginia–Kentucky state line offers guided tours from late August through October. The Southern Gap Outdoor Adventure Center west of Grundy also offers access to viewing areas. You can also watch a live online elk cam and find a wealth of other information, on the Department of Wildlife Resources website.

Red spruce forests once dominated high elevations of the central and northern Appalachians. At the turn of the 20th century, spruce timber was harvested at a devastating rate to build everything from furniture to ships. As a result, mature red spruce forests are now scarce and fragmented, isolated “islands” with low genetic diversity.

The good news is a broad and growing movement to restore red spruce and genetic diversity across its native range, a massive effort that touched down in Virginia in spring 2021. Led by Clinch Valley forester Tal Jacobs, TNC planted 25,000 red spruce seedlings across 125 acres on Beartown Mountain in Russell County. The plantings took place on TNC’s Conservation Forestry easement at Rich Mountain and on the state’s Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area.

“There’s a lot of promise here for future public–private collaboration,” says Jacobs. Partnership is critical to expanding this imperiled forest habitat that is essential to climate resilience. Larger, healthier, more connected spruce forests can offer a vital refuge for wildlife that need to escape hotter, drier conditions elsewhere. Our research partners are studying the seedlings to better understand how genetics can boost the recovery of red spruce forest across the Appalachians.

More than a decade in the making, Clinch River State Park is officially open to visitors. In June 2021, Governor Ralph Northam joined a celebration in St. Paul to dedicate Virginia’s 41st state park.

“Clinch River State Park is perhaps the perfect model,”Northam said at the event. “It’s certainly a place that we want to protect, not just for us but for future generations. The park will continue to encourage economic growth by helping make southwest Virginia a world-class outdoor recreation destination,” he added.

The state and TNC have worked with willing landowners and other partners to conserve key properties along the Clinch, which is widely considered one of the most important rivers for imperiled freshwater mussels and other rare creatures. In St. Paul, the park’s Sugar Hill unit offers access to the river for boating and fishing, along with eight miles of trails for hiking and biking. Work is ongoing to add additional access points and recreation amenities along the river’s course through four counties.