Conservation Easements and the Future of Foxhunting in Clarke County
July 12, 2009
- By Winkie Mackay-Smith
It’s about you and me and the future of fox-hunting with BRH!
Here is a political reality: The zoning in our County and fox-hunting country is temporary – it can change with one County election cycle. A different Board of Supervisors could be less interested in conservation and more development-prone, which would have inevitable consequences for our sport and our way of life.
Here is a truth: Conservation easements are a permanent way of limiting development and securing o pen space for farming, resource conservation and recreation.
Many Clarke landowners have already placed their property under easement, assuring that open space resources will be preserved in the future. Every hunting day we ride over land that a generous and forward thinking landowner has made available to us and to future generations.
Several years ago, our Supervisors appointed a committee to study the feasibility of reimbursing landowners for the value they were giving up by retiring some of their subdivision and building rights. It was found that a relatively small amount of funding from the County could leverage a much larger amount of State and Federal grants. These are used to purchase easements from property owners who cannot take advantage of the Federal and State income-tax benefits due to their very low income-tax liabilities.
Once the Clarke County Easement Authority was officially formed in 2002, it was funded with about $150,000 a year from “leftover” funds from the prior year’s County budget. In 6 years we have leveraged that funding to qualify for about $2,750,000 in State and Federal grants to purchase easements!
This year, for the first time since the Authority was created, it will not be receiving these funds due to the County’s obligations to fund a new high school.
We need each and every member of the Blue Ridge Hunt to recognize the importance of contributing to our preservation work in the County. We urge one and all to support the Easement Authority to the best of your ability. (And thank you to those members who have been generous and consistent supporters every year!). Please rally to the cause, and give as often and as generously as you can. We have a limited window of time to secure the future of our County and our sport here.
Thanks to the efforts of our Masters, landowners and staff, we enjoy hunting behind one of, if not THE best pack of hounds in the United States, in the most open and accessible country in the United States with one of the lowest subscriptions in the United States. It’s time for every one of us to get solidly and substantially behind the effort to sustain and preserve the country we take for granted.
Gifts are tax deductible.
Checks to: Clarke County Easement Authority
Mail to:
CCEA
101 Chalmers Court, Suite B
Berryville, VA 22611 |
