Tag: The Conservation Fund

Partnership to Protect 32,000 Acres for West Virginia Elk

A new partnership between West Virginia and a nonprofit group will protect about 32,000 acres of forest as habitat for the state’s new elk population.

The Herald-Dispatch reports the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources and The Conservation Fund used $12 million from the Wildlife Conservation Fund to protect the land. The Conservation Fund purchased the land in 2016 and then transferred it to the Division of Natural Resources.

The project was completed in advance of about 60 elk from Arizona that will be added to West Virginia’s elk population in early 2018.

Additional funding came from the West Virginia Outdoor Heritage Conservation Fund, Walmart, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Acres for America program, the Knobloch Family Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Cheat Canyon Property Bought by Conservation Groups

A segment of the Cheat Canyon will become a state wildlife management area and a nature preserve.

The 3,800-acre property stretches about 7 miles from Albright’s outskirts to a segment of Sandy Creek in northern West Virginia.

The Conservation Fund and the Nature Conservancy bought the property from The Forestland Group. The conservation groups plan to transfer the property to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources over the next two years for establishment of a wildlife management area.

Director of the West Virginia Chapter of the Nature Conservancy Rodney Bartgis says his organization has been eyeing the property since the mid-70s.

“It was worth the wait though,” Bartgis says, “because this is one of West Virginia’s most iconic and most beautiful landscapes. Whether you’ve traveled to northern West Virginia or outside of West Virginia, it’s not unusual to mention Cheat Canyon and somebody go, ‘yeah, I’ve white water rafted through Cheat Canyon,’ So it was worth being very patient and to keep trying to pick up the property and it’s very satisfying that now things are finally falling together.”

The wildlife management area will include a nature preserve managed by the Division of Natural Resources and owned by the Nature Conservancy.

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