Last week, the Rappahannock River Basin Commission, working with Conserv, the Virginia Department of Forestry, and the George Washington Regional Commission, submitted a Greenhouse Gas Reduction proposal for federal funding. One of the novel ideas contained in the proposal is to tie Virginia Greenhouse Gas reduction goal to products and services listed on The Rappahannock [...]
Rappahannock River Basin Commission staff, working with Conserv, and The Virginia Department of Forestry, have actively begun the process to create the Rappahannock River Basin Ecosystem Services Council (ESC). The Council, to consist of approximately 30 members, with a majority from business and industry interests working within the basin, will likely convene for a symposium [...]
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has recently released some reports helpful to creation of bioregional sustainable economies such as The Rappahannock Exchange. These include the following:
The WBCSD’s Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), representing the collective effort of 18 leading cement companies from around the world, today released the report “Cement Industry Energy [...]
New hunting, birding/kayaking leasing opportunity just in….
250 acres on Barren Creek in Nanticoke River watershed near Mardela Springs, Maryland.
Contact Barrencreekfarms@hughes.net
Duck Hunting Lease:
Lighted boat ramp with 2 duck blinds.
Depending on season, teal, woodies, mallard.
Full or partial seasons, lease terms negotiable.
Hunting liability insurance available.
Deer Hunting Lease
Mixed hardwood/softwood forest.
4 fixed deer stands.
Multiple points available for tree stands.
Bow [...]
Read tomorrow’s post about a Maryland property owner offering hunting, birdwatching, and kayak/camping leases on their waterfront property…
The Presbyterian Church 2009 PRC National Eco-justice Conference was held at Montreat Conference Center in Montreat, North Carolina, this past week. The conference organizers were clearly focusing on sustainability through attention to links between topics such as global warming, human health, and food. Particularly significant from a conservation marketplace perspective were discussions that touched on [...]
Today, after several months of testing Deep Green Classifieds, we have substantially simplified format. Changes include:
Specific Outdoor Recreation Lease categories for Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina
Reduced the number of leasing categories to 6. These are:
Hunting (deer, duck, bear, etc.)
Fishing (trout in streams or for bass in farm ponds)
Birding and wildlife observation
Stargazing
Camping
Hiking, mountain biking, [...]
As Conserv’s relationship with the Rappahannock River Basin deepens, I thought it would be a good idea to explore one of my favorite tributaries of the river a little more deeply. With the high waters of early summer, I took the opportunity to kayak the upper Robinson, from Criglersville to Rt. 29. It was a [...]
Yesterday, environmental history was made at the Old Beale Memorial Church in Tappahannock, the oldest documented courthouse in Virginia. Surrounded by Flemish bond brickwork with salt-glazed headers and compass-headed windows, the Rappahannock River Basin Commission took the first step toward moving Virginia into the ranks of the leaders of the worldwide ecosystem services movement.
In a [...]
My colleague Buck Kline, at the Virginia Department of Forestry, attended the Wildlife Habitat Council 1st Ecosystem Services conference last week in Maryland. He just forwarded me his speaker’s notes for Sally Collins’s presentation. Sally Collins, as folks may know, is the new Director of the USDA Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets.
Ms. Collins’s comments [...]
Today, Deep Green Classifieds has added three new marketplace categories:
For Fee Hunting Leases
For Fee Fishing Leases
For Fee Wildlife Observation Leases
Ads for these leases are free and can be posted with just a few steps at Deep Green Classifieds.
We hope to be working with partner hunting and fishing organizations in the months ahead to assist landowners [...]
From the Wildlife Habitat Council Website…this is the last day for this conference in Maryland.
Ecosystem Services
on Corporate Lands Conference
June 11-12, 2009
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Silver Spring, MD
The first annual Ecosystem Services on Corporate Lands conference, presented by the Wildlife Habitat Council in collaboration with the World Resources Institute, will focus on the connections between habitat management, biodiversity conservation, [...]
Next week, the Northwest Environmental Business Council and the American Forest Foundation will present a conference titled Ecosystem Markets, Making Them Work. Specific topics will include:
The role of ecosystem markets
The state of market development
The business opportunity
The international perspective
Policy issues in market design
Making regulatory markets work
Progress in developing market tools
Moving forward with voluntary markets
Case studies of [...]
Today we added a new category for Deep Green Classifieds…“Relaxing in a cottage, cabin, or lodge“ This is a classification targeted specifically for landowners with cottages on farms or other natural areas that rent a built structure as a result of the surrounding environmental assets. We hope this new addition to Deep Green Classifieds will [...]
Conserv and the Rappahannock River Basin Commission, working with other agencies and organizations, will soon make an announcement about a major event to be held later this year.
Recently, Teri Gordon, from Lake Hughes, California, and a REALTOR with P.J. deHaas Properties, contacted me about enrolling in the American Conservation Broker certification program. During our conversation, Teri discussed her passion for the desert and lake habitat around northern Los Angeles and for the Lakes and Valleys Conservancy.
The mission of the Conservancy is:
to acquire, [...]
The purpose of Deep Green Classifieds is to provide a platform for the creation of a watershed-based economy that is expressly designed to enhance the health of the environmental assets and ecosystem services human civilization depends upon. The current categories found within Deep Green have already been modified since its launch a few weeks ago.
If [...]
Farming and forestry landowners are looking for additional sources of revenue. In the not too distant future, federal, state, and local governments are going to have far less dollars to operate with. Traditional government conservation program funds are shrinking and some are being eliminated completely.
We exist to help these types of landowners create additional revenue [...]
In just a few weeks, Deep Green Classifieds has found its way to the #1 position on Google search engine for several environmental asset and ecosystem service categories! Tomorrow we will begin a series of articles designed to help rural landowners make money by advertising their environmental assets and ecosystem services on this site.
[...]
I was in my garden and was reflecting how the depleted soil from past years has been renewed with some half-baked cow manure from my buddy Tim Neale’s Beaver Creek Farm out on Mountain Track Road. My mind wandered to the briefing I gave yesterday to a local group on the idea of creating a [...]
Yesterday I was doing some consulting work on trail development in Richmond, Virginia. I had the pleasure of working for Richmond for a few months and during that time became a huge fan of the City—its architecture, topography, and river. I think that the future may be bright for Richmonders if they broaden their concerns [...]
The monetization of Conserv has finally begun. Please bear with us as we begin to implement programs in the months ahead to bring financial stability to the organization. These include targeted site advertising as well as changes in sponsor and membership functionalities.
And thanks to the Ivey Ranch, California PTO Fundraising Website for use of the [...]
In the last post of this five-part series on Deep Green Classifieds, I will offer a Vision for a new type of conservation to begin. This vision is based on the following cultural changes now taking place here in the U.S. perhaps and to varying degrees in some other industrialized countries worldwide:
the rise of the [...]
This blog is focused on issues related to the creation of economies that will maintain and restore environmental assets and ecosystem services. A prior post focused on the three dimensions of an economy, allocation, distribution, and scale/quality, and the appropriate role of government, particularly in the setting of scale/quality for environmental resource stocks. The thinking [...]
I was talking today with my old colleague Jack Marshall. Dr. Marshall is the driving force behind Advocates for A Sustainable Albemarle Population (ASAP). Jack was talking to me about the site and said that from reading the Homepage, he didn’t quite understand what Deep Green is about. I told him to imagine if he [...]
We are still working out bugs in the classifieds so, please, bear with us. For now, here are the steps to post an ad:
1. Click on “Deep Green Classifieds” at the top of the homepage.
2. Click on one of the categories on the right hand side of the page.
3. Click on “Add a new Ad [...]
This week we will feature daily posts on Deep Green Classifieds, Conserv’s newest marketplace. Deep Green was launched last week along with an overall upgrade to Version IV of the site. The following are the themes for each article:
Today - Origins and theory of Deep Green
Tuesday - How to use Deep Green
Wednesday - Deep Green [...]
What do all these images have in common? They show people paying for the sustainable use of environmental assets and ecosystem services! Today we launch Version 4 of Conserv featuring a new service, Deep Green Classifieds. The classifieds are a free service for conservation-minded persons to find each other in search of:
Leasing and sale of [...]
As I struggle to get a market-based grant application out the door by COB on Friday, it seems necessary to review the latest information on the Chesapeake—the television programs, columns, and reports. It’s well, just incredible work. There is though a worldview that I belive is at the least, understated, and at most, missing, from [...]
I have been working with the good folks at Simply Logic Technologies and Category 4 in Charlottesville for months to launch the next version of this site. It’s does seem like it’s literally 2 steps backwards for every 3 forward but we’ll get there. The new site has to start bringing home the bacon. I [...]
My brother and I were talking last night about the state of Wicomico County, Md. He has lived on a farm near the Nanticoke River for about a decade and is concerned about the loss of agriculture around him. Since he bought his place, many houses, both on large lot and small, have sprung up [...]
A few weeks ago, we featured a Success Story about former State Senator Doug Barclay and his trout fishing business on his farm on the Salmon River near Port Ontario, N.Y. That story discussed how one family has forged into market-based conservation.
Over this past weekend, my fishing buddy, Chris Mawdsley (owner of CrisCars in Orange) [...]
When I was still Director of Community Development for the Town of Orange, it was appropriate for me to attend meetings of the Rappahannock River Basin Commission (about 1/2 of the Town is in the Rappahannock River Basin, the other half being in the York River Basin). The last meeting I attended, a year or [...]
Rippin Run Video
On March 23, Laurie Miller and Greg Grymes recorded a conservation easement on their 87-acre property, Rippin Run Farm. Rippin Run Farm is located in Greene County, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Found along the Old Fredericksburg Road (Rt. 609), it is a property within and around some [...]
Coming soon! Laurie Miller’s story about her multi-year struggle to permanently protect this property in Greene County, Virginia, before placing it on the market as a Conservation Property in the Conserv Conservation Property Marketplace.
As I have mentioned before, I am a fan of the organization PERC. I just received their Spring, 2009 volume of PERCReports and within is a cool piece on salmon in upstate New York. The article, Former State Senator Sees River as Magnet, by David Figura, (originally printed in the Post-Standard on October 12, ‘08) [...]
Conserv: We are thinking of relocating from virginia to california. so far we have been in touch with traditional real estate agents. we would love to find a property that is sensitive or may potentially be developed so we could “rescue” it from overdevelopment. we need to build a small one story house on it [...]
After years of effort, the Internal Revenue Service has notified Conserv that they have approved our not for profit status. This will enable us to further grow the company—as we prepare to launch a new generation of this site in a few weeks, that provides business opportunities to today’s conservation-minded buyers and sellers of environmental [...]
Conserv: We are thinking of relocating from virginia to california. so far we have been in touch with traditional real estate agents. we would love to find a property that is sensitive or may potentially be developed so we could “rescue” it from overdevelopment. we need to build a small one story [...]
After years of effort, the Internal Revenue Service has notified Conserv that they have approved our not for profit status. This will enable us to further grow the company—as we prepare to launch a new generation of this site in a few weeks, that provides business opportunities to today’s conservation-minded buyers and sellers of environmental [...]
A 1613 acre historically-significant property is now for sale in Amelia County, Virginia, and can be viewed within the Conservation Property listings on this site. The property contains a portion of the Amelia Springs Battlefield and is protected by a conservation easement, held by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. Contact Philip Vannoorbeeck, at 804-514-6901, for more [...]
Bob Jordan died early Monday morning, January 5. Bob was my last living brother-in-law. His photography work graces the homepage of this website. He was a loving father, uncle, grandfather, and husband to my sister-in-law Mary.
Bob was an eagle scout. At his funeral yesterday, I realized that this training formed the structural foundation for his [...]
Growing up, we always got Sears appliances. My dad, an electrical and aerospace engineer, always thought they were the best. Although I fully realize that manufacturing is not what it used to be, about a year and a half ago, we renovated our kitchen, and purchased Kenmore appliances. A few days ago, Anna told me [...]