Planning Sessions

After a year of intensive activity including start-up documentation, incorporation, outreach efforts, educational sessions, local landowner meeting, and membership recruitment, Northern Neck Land Conservancy (NNLC) held well-attended planning sessions on January 5 and 6, 2005.

The meetings, at the Chinn House at the Warsaw campus of Rappahannock Community College, marked efforts to improve cooperation with partners, such as the Trust for Public Land, the National Park Service and Virginia Outdoors Foundation. Budgetary planning based on projected activities, was addressed.

Wink Hastings from the National Park Service, Chesapeake Bay Conservation Assistance Program, presented tools which are available to identify and target critical and sensitive areas. He stated that land use is vitally important to the quality of the waters of the Bay, and thus local land trusts can yield positive results by actions which enhance protection of natural areas, and encourage best management practices.

Debi Osborne, director of the Chesapeake Field Office, discussed how The Trust for Public Land acts upon opportunities to protect properties in conjunction with governmental agencies and other conservation groups. She reviewed ways in which NNLC could assist in efforts on the Northern Neck.