The Virginia Land Conservation Foundation (Foundation or VLCF) serves an important land conservation mission in the Commonwealth. It leverages state funds through matching grants and partnerships to protect working farms and forests, historic lands, cultural resources, open spaces and parks, and natural areas. The Foundation’s distinctive features include a cross-cutting grant review process to maximize conservation values of funded projects, an inter-agency staff review team that involves expertise from multiple state agencies, and a final review by a diverse Board of Trustees whose membership includes appointees from the Governor, Speaker of the House of Delegates, and the Senate of Virginia.

Virginia Land Conservation Foundation

Since the last biennial report of the Foundation was produced in 2020, the Foundation has held three grant rounds. In the FY2021 state budget, $10 million was appropriated to VLCF. This amount was divided between two grant rounds due to uncertainty with the state budget during the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The first grant round included $4.5 million of the appropriation. The Board met virtually to award the grant round on February 5, 2021, with $3,406,250 available for grants ($3,375,000 plus $31,250 unallocated from FY20). The Foundation received 15 applications requesting approximately $10.5 million. The board approved 12 projects to protect 4,532.22 acres. Additionally, $1,125,000 was allocated to VOF for the Open Space Lands Preservation Trust Fund.

The second grant round of FY2021 included the remaining $5.5 million of the FY2021 appropriation. With $1,375,000 allocated to VOF for the Open Space Lands Preservation Trust Fund, $4,125,000 was available for the grant round. An additional $710,000 was made available from projects withdrawn from the FY20 and FY21 grant rounds, totaling $4,835,000 in grant funding. The Foundation received 35 proposals requesting approximately $11.4 million. On June 10, 2021, the Board approved 22 projects to protect 5,092.76 acres.

The FY2022 grant round received $7,500,000 in the state budget, with $2,500,000 allocated to the Open Space Lands Preservation Trust Fund. The Foundation received 34 proposals requesting approximately $10.5 million. The Board met on October 27, 2021, to award funding to 30 projects that will protect 6,770.80 acres. Details of each grant round are provided later in this report.

Information regarding projects from past grant rounds and their funding amounts can be found in Appendix A of this report. Additional data reflecting the geographic distribution of these recent grant awards and all prior projects can be found in Appendix B.

Total funds appropriated to the Foundation exceed $86 million since FY2000 (Table 1 - see numbered page ii) and have resulted in the protection of 192,805 acres. To date, $66.5 million has been allocated to VLCF’s matching grant program. Additionally, more than $20 million has been allocated to the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) for the Open-Space Lands Preservation Trust Fund in accordance with Virginia Code § 10.1-1020(C)(1). Moneys from this Fund are used to aid localities acquiring open-space easements or landowners conveying open-space easements with the costs associated with the conveyance of the easements.

Since first receiving funding in FY2000, the Foundation has held 17 grant rounds. During those 17 grant rounds, VLCF received 455 applications requesting more than $170 million in state funding, which was more than twice the available amount (Table 2 - see numbered page iv). To date, VLCF has awarded funding to 287 of the 455 grant applications and awarded more than $72.5 million to land conservation projects to protect nearly 85,000 acres at an average cost to the Foundation of $732 per acre.

Chapter 705 of the 2022 Virginia Acts of Assembly (Senate Bill 31) amended provisions of the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation to include Virginia’s Indian Tribes. At least one of the nonlegislative citizen members of the Board of Trustees shall now be a member of a state-recognized or federally-recognized Virginia Indian Tribe. These Tribes are now also eligible entities to apply for grants for the conservation and restoration of their homelands. Additionally, the reporting requirements were changed from biennial to annual and will now include an estimate of funds needed to achieve goals established by the Board for natural area protection, open spaces and parks, farmland preservation, forestland preservation, historic and cultural areas and meeting the needs of under-resourced communities. As a result, the FY23 VLCF Grant Manual and scoring criteria were revised to include Tribes and assign points to projects that meet the needs of under-resourced communities.

The Foundation met its charge to develop a strategic plan for the expenditure of moneys received from the Fund. The strategic plan governing fiscal expenditures has been incorporated into successive VLCF grant manuals beginning in 1999 and is updated regularly. The Board approved the most recent revisions to the grant manual at the July 12, 2022, meeting to establish the FY2023 grant round www.dcr.virginia.gov/virginia_land_conservation_foundation/). The grant scoring criteria are outlined in Appendix C.

The Virginia Land Conservation Foundation serves as a coordinating mechanism for bringing together a number of state agencies’ land conservation efforts and priorities. The Foundation is one of the key tools that Virginia utilizes to attain its land conservation targets. A coordinating multi-agency task force consisting of the Director of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the State Forester, the Director of the Department of Historic Resources, the Director of the Department of Wildlife Resources, and the Executive Director of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, or their designees, provide the VLCF Board with assistance on such matters as grant criteria, grant priorities, and grant selection. The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation serves as the lead staff for the Foundation.

The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Office of Land Conservation serves as a statewide central contact, repository, and clearinghouse for land conservation in Virginia. During VLCF grant rounds, this office serves as an important source of information for potential grant applicants and acts as the grant manager for projects funded.

The Office’s website (www.dcr.virginia.gov/land_conservation/) includes a wide variety of land conservation materials and contact information to assist landowners, conservation organizations, and managers with their conservation planning. In addition, the website provides a link to the state’s comprehensive statewide conserved lands resource mapping tool, Natural Heritage Data Explorer (NHDE), developed by DCR’s Division of Natural Heritage. This important and useful land conservation-planning tool, which is updated regularly, is accessible at https://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural-heritage/nhdeinfo.