By CYNTHIA
McCLOUD
For The State Journal
The West
Virginia Land Trust has a new executive director and more funding for its
conservation efforts.
The only
statewide 501(c)(3) land trust recently hired Parkersburg native Brent Bailey as
its executive director.
Bailey
said he will lead the land trust in protecting even more of West Virginia's special places that
have cultural, agricultural, historical, ecological or biological importance
with a tool used widely in other parts of the country: conservation easements.
Funding to
place those easements on properties has been made possible by $12 million from
lawsuit settlements.
"Protecting
watersheds is a great opportunity here," Bailey said. "The settlement funds
derived from damage that occurred in bodies of water. We can look at headwater
streams starting at the top of watershed to protect habitats for fishing. We
have the means now to bring some protection to those key places.
"I think
overall the biggest opportunity is it gives a chance to accelerate the pace of
conservation in West Virginia, statewide but
especially in the central coal mining region."
Putting money to work
Bailey
outlined how the Land Trust will be able to do more with the funding from coal
company settlements.
The money
is available to purchase environmentally sensitive parcels of land, but it's
not the Land Trust's goal or purpose to own or hold land.
"We can
purchase land for protection, and it can later be purchased from us by a state
or federal government body," Bailey said, explaining that the nonprofit
organization can move faster to acquire land than a government entity that
would have to wait for appropriations.
"The Land
Trust can also put a conservation easement on those lands that restrict the
ways they can be developed and then sell them," he said. "I think the
conservation easements are a tool for conservation that are perhaps not broadly
understood in West Virginia but widely used
throughout the rest of the United States."
The Land
Trust can assist homeowners who want to restrict development of their land in
perpetuity with adding an easement to the property's deed.
"Everything
is voluntary," Bailey stressed. "The landowners are in charge. They drive this.
We bring a set of legal tools to a transaction that allows their wishes to be
protected."
Breaking new ground
That's
where a partnership between the Land Trust and a new law clinic at West Virginia University becomes important.
"The Land
Use and Sustainable Development Clinic at WVU is going to be really important
to our work," Bailey said. "They have a staff of attorneys to help with the
somewhat extensive legal work in the easement process. In addition, the law
clinic can represent the landowner, and we can have other attorneys
representing us. And it's going to give aspiring attorneys – students – a
chance to work on conservation issues where before they might not have had much
exposure to it."
The Land
Trust could grow in scope in other ways.
"We have
worked quietly as a small organization for many years with a working board
preserving properties," Bailey said. "One other thing we played a leadership
role in is the development of the Outdoor Heritage Conservation Fund. It's a
fee levied at the county level when property changes hands. It goes into a fund,
and the state of West Virginia has about half of this
OHCF funding for acquisitions of properties. The other half is distributed to
conservation organizations like the Land Trust to protect land."
The
settlement money can be used as matching funds.
"We're
going to look at what are other funding mechanisms, like the property transfer
fee, that might generate income and look for donations of property and
donations of funds from individuals and corporations to support our work."
The Land
Trust works in partnership with watershed associations, other land trusts in
the state, government agencies and municipalities and coordinates efforts to
identify and protect West Virginia's special places.
"This
funding allows us to work in partnership with so many other entities and
provide services that we haven't before." Bailey said. "We are excited about
what this could mean to setting aside valuable land in West Virginia. It's a change to ramp
up conservation in the state."
Bailey's foundation
Bailey previously worked as the
Appalachian director for the Mountain Institute, which does conservation and
community development in mountain ranges around the world.
He has
worked in Appalachia for the past eight
years. For 20 years before that, he did international conservation work.
"One area
of conservation I thought I wanted to be working in was land protection,"
Bailey said. "West Virginia has so little land
already protected compared to other states. We do have good sized chunks of
federal land. Where you fish or hike could easily be turned under tomorrow
without the infrastructure or resources to really protect lands.
"That's
the piece that's been missing from our conservation picture here in West Virginia," he said. "And I
wanted to be connected to it."
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