The Virginia Outdoors Foundation is a quasi-state agency formed by the Virginia General Assembly in 1966 "to promote the preservation of open space lands and to encourage private gifts of money, securities, land or other property to preserve the natural, scenic, historic, open-space and recreational areas of the Commonwealth." It currently owns 3,516 acres (14.23 km2) of public land and holds and manages conservation easements on more than 606,000 acres (2,452 km2) of private land.
The Virginia Outdoors Foundation is governed and administered by a board of seven at-large trustees appointed by Virginia governors for four-year staggered terms. The sitting governor appoints a chairman from among the seven trustees.
Some of the properties that the Virginia Outdoors Foundation currently protects through conservation easements include Carvins Cove and Mill Mountain owned by the City of Roanoke, Wildwood Park in the City of Radford, Shirley Plantation in Charles City County, James Madison's Montpelier in Orange County, and more than 4,000 acres of land along the Rappahannock River owned by the City of Fredericksburg.
As of 2008, 20 percent of the land in Clarke County, Virginia was covered by conservation easements.
Famous quotes containing the words outdoors and/or foundation:
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—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)