Land Trust of Virginia

HELP LAND TRUST OF VIRGINIA PROTECT VIRGINIA'S NATURAL AND WORKING LANDS, AND HISTORICAL HERITAGE

Land Trust of Virginia (LTV) partners with private landowners who wish to voluntarily protect and preserve their working farmland or natural lands with significant historic, scenic, and ecological value for the benefit of our community using conservation easements. 

WHAT'S AN EASEMENT?

Decades ago, communities across our country, while appreciating their local, state, and federal efforts to protect land, came to understand that it was not enough, as they watched valuable open spaces within their communities being lost to development. So, a quiet movement started in which private citizens started to form local land trusts, taking conservation of the land within their communities into their own hands, organizing and informing their neighbors of the important role of conservation easements. Today, there are approximately 2,400 private land trusts in the country; 28 in Virginia. Most of these have a local geographic focus.  

A conservation easement is a private legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust, such as the Land Trust of Virginia, that protects land and its conservation values permanently. Together, the landowner and the land trust craft the legal easement document so that it protects the significant natural and cultural attributes of the land. The landowner still owns their property, but the conservation easement is a permanent legal document that gets recorded with the property’s deed and travels with the property even when the property changes ownership.

Conservation easements are a strategy for protection and provide the opportunity for improvement of water quality, preservation of cultural and historic sites, protection of our plant and animal communities, sustaining working landscapes and natural areas, and enhancing our quality of life. 

ABOUT US

Founded in 1992, Land Trust of Virginia was formed out of concern that our beautiful countryside, agricultural fields, and historic sites were being lost forever to development. Volunteers rallied to contact private landowners and encourage them to permanently retire their properties’ development potential through a legal process called a conservation easement. These easement documents are recorded with the deed and forever travel with the ownership of the property.

To date, LTV has helped 270 landowners conserve their properties through conservation easements, resulting in 35,000 acres across 35 Virginia counties. Through the generous leadership of these landowners, farms, fields, forests, wildlife habitat, water ways, wetlands, and our history have been forever protected.

LTV remains the Commonwealth’s premier land trust. We hold more conservation easements than any other private land trust in the Commonwealth and are accredited by the national Land Trust Alliance, a certification that marks our quality of work and ethical standards. 

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