The Blue Ridge Land Conservancy (BRLC), a regional organization working to preserve open space throughout Southwest Virginia, has named four new trustees and elected officers for 2015-2016.
Linda Pharis will be president. Pharis has served as the chairwoman of the Public Relations and Education committee for a number of years. She is retired from Blue Ridge PBS, and has been the Director of Communications for Center in the Square as well as the Curator of Education at the Valentine Museum in Richmond, VA. She has had a lifelong interest in preserving and understanding the relationship between natural and cultural history.
Betty H. Lesko, of Smith Mountain Lake, has been named President-elect. F. Fulton Galer, retired from Cherry Bekaert was reappointed as treasurer. Whitney H. Feldmann, a former school teacher, secretary.
The new trustees are: Frank Carter, President and CEO of Member One Federal Credit Union; Diana Christopulos, founder of the Roanoke Valley Cool Cities Coalition and current Vice President of the Appalachian trail club; Josh Gibson, Town Planner of Rocky Mount and previously a project manager for the Virginia Outdoors Foundation; and Nelson Lafon, a project coordinator with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
The Blue Ridge Land Conservancy provides landowners with voluntary options to preserve their property for agriculture, forestry, wildlife, scenic, historic or environmental qualities, or other traditional rural use. Such agreements, called conservation easements, can provide the landowner with substantial federal tax deductions, reduced inheritance tax and a state tax credit, which can be sold. Since 1996, BRLC has helped to preserve over 16,500 acres across Southwest Virginia.
For more information about conservation easements or how to join BRLC, call (540) 985-0000 or visit http://www.blueridgelandconservancy.org/.
