Conservation efforts on display during Fall Forestry and Wildlife Tour

This is the 49th annual Fall Forestry and Wildlife Field Tour. It used to be called the Bus Tour because we used to use buses, but we're in vans. These tours attract all sorts of people. We do have forest landowners come. That's the majority of our attendees, but we also have master naturalists, master gardeners. We have local delegates and leaders, and anyone who's really just interested in learning more about the third largest industry in Virginia, which is forestry. The first stop of our day was Devil's Backbone State Forest. It's actually just barely inside Shenandoah County and up on the mountainside and we looked at different forest management practices there that the state forestry has done. They're excellent at benefiting wildlife and the local economy. Secondly, we are going to a private landowner who has a large population of wood turtles, a threatened and endangered species, and we'll be looking at other wildlife practices that he's implemented on his farm. We are at Landfall Farm, which is located about six and a half miles north of Winchester, Virginia. There was a lot of unfertile, non-productive land. And unfortunately, all of it was invasive species. So we got rid of that, built up the soil, then came through and planted. And our final stop of the day will be at another private lander where there's active timber harvesting job going on. Again, largely designed to improve habitat for wildlife. He's doing a really good job of utilizing the wood here. The way we find these sites, they're like diamonds in the rough. I meet with local natural resource professionals who know the area, know the people. When I was approached, I immediately said yes, we would love to show all different things that we're doing with wildlife management and improvement, protecting the environment, including this farm being in a conservation easement. I would say there's two things I hope people take away. One is that there's resource professionals to help them meet their goals and objectives. Every land owner has something that they're interested in or more than one thing. And secondly that active management is a good option to help them meet those goals and objectives. The takeaway from each of the programs is that active forest management is good for the Commonwealth. It's good for our economy, it's good for our wildlife, it's good for our people, and it's good for our forests.