For Immediate Release: January 28, 2021
Contacts:
Aaron Kershaw, Communications Coordinator
Northern Virginia Conservation Trust
akershaw@nvct.org / (703) 354-5093
NVCT Applauds the Biden Administration’s Goal of Protecting 30 Percent of the Nation’s Land and Water by 2030
The Northern Virginia Conservation Trust (NVCT) applauds the Biden administration’s executive order that affirms the critical goal of achieving the protection of 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030. In committing to this ambitious agenda, the administration acknowledges the importance of natural resource conservation to our nation’s climate change agenda in the most forceful way any president ever has. Doing so is a call to action for organizations like NVCT all across the country to work together in unprecedented ways to meet the most existential challenge that our environment has ever faced.
“It is so incredibly inspiring to see leadership from the President in making land conservation a pillar of his administration in such a bold way. This goal isn’t just aspirational – it’s absolutely necessary to achieve if we are to combat the effects of climate change that are already impacting us in so many obvious ways,” said NVCT Executive Director Alan Rowsome.
NVCT sees significant opportunity in an integrated approach to tackling climate change from federal, state, and local levels down to organizations like ours that are on the ground working with landowners and community stakeholders to save critical land and water resources one acre at a time.
“Roughly 16% of Virginia’s natural resources are currently protected, and though the goal isn’t explicitly to have 30% of lands and waters protected in each state, we know we’d need to nearly double our conserved lands statewide in the next 9 years to be a model across the country for how to meet this challenge. That’s certainly ambitious, but it’s a momentous day when the President acknowledges the importance of land conservation so boldly and is pledging the full force of the federal government to make it happen,” Rowsome said.
Last year NVCT conserved over a thousand acres of land in mostly urban areas despite the global pandemic’s challenges making it one of the land trust's most successful years of natural area protection to date. The President’s announcement and pledge of support provide a critical opportunity to improve on the progress NVCT made in 2020 as we do our part to meet the significant challenges that climate change has already brought to our communities.
To read the President’s executive order, click here.
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