Our Virginia: Impact Report 2024

Our Virginia team recently joined with Nature Conservancy colleagues in Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina on a proposal to bring our science and our conservation expertise to bear on the region’s climate challenges. I’m thrilled that our collaboration will continue, thanks to a historic $200 million EPA grant that will bolster the funding we need to implement nature-based climate solutions (see page 4).

With more than $47 million coming to Virginia, we look forward to working with the commonwealth, as well as our regional colleagues, to implement one of the largest-ever grants for natural climate solutions. An award of this size means several things. First, the EPA recognizes that our natural resources are vital to mitigating climate change. Moreover, the grant makes an emphatic statement that investing in nature pays off in myriad environmental, economic and community benefits.

This grant also represents a tremendous amount of trust in The Nature Conservancy—from the quality of the science that guides us to our track record of bringing people together to get things done. To that end, it gives us the flexibility to approach each project with the most appropriate tool from our conservation toolbox: land acquisition,

habitat restoration, conservation easements, carbon agreements and more.

To maximize our impact in Virginia, TNC will focus on protecting, enhancing and restoring forests and wetlands. Some of our specific goals include conserving an additional 36,000 acres of hardwood forests in the Appalachians, nearly 8,000 acres of longleaf pine ecosystem and 150 acres of tidal wetlands. In addition to capturing carbon, this work will lower wildfire and flood risks and expand opportunities for outdoor recreation.

The magnitude of the climate challenge makes public-private partnerships critical, and it’s TNC supporters like you who make them possible. Your support enables us

to follow the science, get results on the ground and earn public trust. Thank you for helping us demonstrate how conservation contributes to a healthy environment, economy and society!

Retired musician and Nature Conservancy trustee Bill Owen has become known across the South for singing the praises of longleaf pine. At Raccoon Creek Pinelands, his farm in Yale, Owen has worked with TNC and myriad restoration partners to plant more longleaf pine than anywhere else in Virginia.

I’ve visited before to document plantings and observe prescribed burns that enable longleaf systems to thrive. But this summer, as Owen takes me on a tour of the farm, our conversation turns from fire to Lightning—as in his Ford Lightning pickup truck.

Clean. Quiet. Fast. The words repeat like a chorus as Owen explains why he’s happy he switched to electric vehicles (EVs). In addition to the truck, which he owns and uses primarily around the farm, Owen leases an electric Mustang that he drives on longer trips.

To demonstrate the truck’s power, Owen turns onto an empty rural highway and punches the accelerator. The truck surges forward, almost silently, and I’m completely surprised by the sudden weight of gravity pressing me into the seatback.

Steering us onto a rough two-track into a grove of pines, Owen tells a story about another time the Lightning’s performance proved to be, well, shocking. “Raccoon Creek hosted Martha Williams, who was the then-new director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,” he says. “We had all of the conservation leadership in Virginia here, and I had hired a 30-person bus.” The tour was going as planned—until the bus became hopelessly stuck.

The group discussed calling for a tow truck or tractor. “Then I said, ‘You know, I’ve got this new electric truck,’” Owen continues. “Everybody’s like, ‘No way,’ but I sent somebody racing to the house to get this,” he says, pointing to the steering wheel. “It pulled that bus right out.

Not even a hiccup.” He adds, chuckling, “That was great publicity for it.” Owen acknowledges that EVs won’t meet everyone’s needs, at least until the range and charging infrastructure expand. “But the improvement that’s happened with electric cars since they first came out has been staggering,” he says, and they fit his lifestyle well. If you mostly drive within a 300-mile radius of home, he explains, then EVs have the advantage, including minimal maintenance. “There’s no oil to change, and there’s really no tune-up involved,” he says. Owen’s vehicles have seen the inside of a shop only for tire rotations and annual state inspections.

The attribute that most influenced Owen’s transition to EVs, though, is that they’re simply cleaner. And that’s where his priorities and TNC’s align. In Virginia, personal vehicles generate more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector. According to Lena Lewis, who manages TNC’s Virginia energy and climate policy work, consumers need options to enable easier, faster transitions to EVs. “The single most effective thing most Virginians can do to lower your carbon footprint is to switch from gas-powered to electric vehicles,” Lewis says.