By Elizabeth McGowan
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO
POUND, Va.—Waiting around isn’t Debbi Hale’s forte.
So nobody in this depleted coalfield town of barely 850 near the Kentucky border was shocked four years ago when the retired gym teacher orchestrated a $10,000 makeover of a neglected patch of grass across from a trailer court. From there, it’s just a short hike down to a paddler’s bliss, where Bad Creek flows into eight undisturbed miles of the Pound River.
Then, just days before the July 2022 ribbon-cutting, a ferocious flood ripped through Appalachia.
“And just like that, it washed the boat launch’s deck and two picnic tables down the river,” said Hale, standing next to a pristine kiosk and map spared by the floodwaters. “I admit, at first I wanted to give up. But outdoor recreation is our greatest hope, so I’ll have to start over.”
It’s an all-too-familiar pattern for the Wise County native. Such exhausting episodes of one step forward, two steps back are common in this place, which has foundered as King Coal’s century-plus reign plays out. That demise has government agencies and entrepreneurs alike casting about to “fix Appalachia” by reshaping a flagging economy long reliant on resource extraction, such as coal mining and logging, into one that invites visitors to hike, bicycle, paddle, ride ATVs and immerse themselves in the remote region’s raw beauty.
While Hale dismisses some of those attempts, she’s intrigued by a pioneering undertaking launched by the country’s largest environmental organization, The Nature Conservancy, in Central Appalachia.
In 2019, TNC persuaded 28 philanthropists and the commonwealth of Virginia to pay the lion’s share of the $130 million needed to purchase 253,000 acres of biologically rich habitat in Southwest Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
TNC named it the Cumberland Forest Project. On a map, it appears as a collection of scattered properties because some of the project’s lands are relatively close to one another, but not necessarily touching.
The financial package included a $20.1 million loan from Virginia’s Clean Water Revolving Loan Fund.
It’s the most massive — and boldest — ecological restoration experiment ever pursued in the eastern United States by the 74-year-old nonprofit. TNC, at roughly the halfway point of an intricate 10-year investment, plans to find a buyer willing to continue what it started.
Advocates say its innovative financial structure could serve as a template for large-scale conservation purchases throughout the country.
Yet TNC acknowledges the challenges of managing the mega-purchase and achieving its ambitious goals. Preserving vulnerable ecosystems, providing an acceptable return for investors, lifting the fortunes of struggling rural communities — it’s a delicate balancing act.
But the dual threats of climate change and biodiversity loss prompted the nonprofit to depart from its traditional philosophy of buying one parcel at a time. “To acquire a property of this size, we really had to stretch ourselves,” said Brad Kreps, the Abingdon, Va.-based director of TNC’s Clinch Valley Program.
Although the Trump administration is attempting to dismantle hundreds of environmental protections at the federal level, TNC leaders note that the project’s private land status provides a buffer from most of those actions. Still, unanticipated changes to tax laws or overt political pressure could mean such a model is neither sustainable nor replicable.
Greg Meade, who directs the project for TNC, said the federal government has little regulatory authority over it. “Donald Trump is not doing us any favors,” he said, “but we’re dealing with the same headwinds that every other business is facing because of economic uncertainty.”
Thus far, project managers can point to several victories, including funding for modest public endeavors in coalfield communities and planting tiny trees to reforest old surface mines.
Still, project investors have seen fluctuating returns on valuable carbon credits earned by existing woodlands on the property. And some detractors wonder whether TNC is merely mimicking the giant landowners of yore, the coal and timber barons who reaped profits from the region’s natural resources.
Gabe Schwartzman, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, has studied similar landowner relationships with host communities in Tennessee’s Clearfork Valley.
With the Cumberland project, “my concern is not with the Conservancy or the individual investors,” said Schwartzman, who specializes in geography and sustainability. Instead, he said, it’s the economic model of allowing financial gains to be made off resources without the people nearby benefiting.
“By allowing unregulated finance to boom and banking to take over, large companies and wealthy investors can make money without employing anyone or distributing gains.”
Hale, the daughter of a coal miner, views TNC as an ally. She sees its community revitalization mission as aligning with her resolve to reinvent Pound as a recreational mecca.
“I don’t want to give up, even though it gets difficult,” she said, “because I want to see how it turns out.”
The Three Pillars
The bulk of the 153,000 project acres in Virginia is timberland, coalfields and natural areas in Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell and Wise counties. That expanse offers sustenance to creatures as grand as an 800-pound bull elk and as minuscule as a third-of-an-ounce golden-winged warbler. Its 577 miles of rivers and streams eventually flow to the Ohio River, then the mighty Mississippi, before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
To acquire the total quarter-of-a-million acres, TNC adopted a corporate ownership model, setting up a private company through NatureVest, its 10-year-old investment arm. The venture specializes in the relatively new field of impact investing, which attracts wealthy, risk-taking donors who champion conservation.
“This project rests on our three pillars of nature, people and the local economy,” Kreps said of the private equity model. “We’re taking a chance that we can manage the property and also earn a positive financial return, so we have to have a viable business proposition.
“Can we do it? We’re learning as we go.”
The heart of TNC’s quest in Central Appalachia is “keeping these forests as forests” and also ensuring that protected open space is accessible to the public in perpetuity, he said. Agreements covering those bases are compatible with a future that encompasses outdoor recreation, sustainable forestry, wildlife management, ecological restoration and, eventually, renewable energy in the form of solar power, he added.
Thus far, TNC has secured such protection for roughly one-third of its project acreage in Virginia, with much more being negotiated. “Establishing these agreements during our ownership window helps set the stage for longer-term conservation,” Kreps said.
Despite that legwork, it’s possible such protections could take a backward turn if the next owner alters or ignores those conservation measures.
Those with the means to invest are also taking calculated risk, Kreps said, because there are no guarantees of returns.
With the Trump administration attempting a drastic upheaval of the federal framework and funding for environmental protection, Taylor Cole, president of Lexington, Va.-based Conservation Partners, said he’s relieved that TNC acted when it did. The nonprofit’s ability to leverage resources allows it to muster the stable support necessary to preserve open space and wildlife habitat, he said.
“With this project, TNC is the master of its own destiny,” said Cole, whose organization isn’t involved in the Cumberland Forest Project. “To have an organization that can bring its business practices to meet the challenge of the environmental degradation that we’re now suffering — my God, what a wonderful approach.”
Cole, who established Conservation Partners in 2001 after a commercial banking career, said Wall Street isn’t wired to grasp such a model, because the chief goal is conserving the 253,000 acres, not garnering profit from it.
“The Conservancy’s bottom line is protecting what we have left of the natural world,” he said. “We hope the experiment is successful, because the potential to leverage this with others could be limitless.”
TNC has three interwoven goals before it sells the property.
Key among them is safeguarding and enhancing a rugged landscape that, at last count, harbors at least four rare plant species and a combined 33 species of birds, bats, fish, crayfish, salamanders and millipedes found in only a few places on Earth.
Another is showing it can be smart business to invest in nature: By logging sustainably. By developing renewable energy on degraded minelands. And by restoring heavily logged forests to maximize the trees’ ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide — cushioning the blows of climate change.
A third is elevating the local economy by boosting access to jobs, training opportunities, and tourism tied to outdoor recreation. For that, TNC established its Community Fund with royalties that fossil fuel companies, which still own mineral rights throughout the property, are required to pay to the landowner for the coal and gas they extract.
In 2021, Hale was one of the first Virginians to apply for a Community Fund grant, administered by the University of Virginia College at Wise.
Once the destroyed canoe and kayak launch in Pound is replaced, she has designs on a plot eight miles downstream for a second launch and picnic spot. That peaceful, shaded stretch of the Pound River, a liquid border between TNC’s Cumberland Forest Project and the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, is part of a 32-mile segment officially designated as “scenic” because of Hale’s advocacy.
“Fresh air and nature are therapy,” Hale said, adding that Pound is situated to draw visitors who don’t want to tangle with world-class whitewater rapids, an attraction at nearby Breaks Interstate Park. “But that’s not going to happen until Pound has a place to stay overnight.”
She’s plunging into that, too. One site she’s eyeing as an RV campground is the former campus of her alma mater, Pound High School. She taught gym and coached volleyball, basketball and tennis there until 2011 when a shrinking population prompted Wise County to consolidate and shutter half of its six high schools.
Her vision for her hometown as a vacation destination was sparked in 2007, when she launched an elective course for juniors and seniors that combined science lessons with hiking, mountain biking and trail-building.
Hale’s family history in Appalachia runs six generations deep — and those connections matter. When she needs access to land to advance her plan, she knows which people to ask and how to wrangle a “yes.”
“Pound might not be Damascus,” she said of the tiny Virginia town near the Tennessee border that put itself on the map as a bicycling and trail haven. “We might not have the Appalachian Trail, but we do have the Pine Mountain Trail, part of the longer Great Eastern Trail. That’s an asset to tout.”
But community initiatives such as Hale’s are just a sliver of TNC’s aspirations.
The deal: Did TNC bite off too much?
Finding $130 million to buy a property larger than Shenandoah National Park from two timber management companies was TNC’s first Cumberland Forest obstacle.
The debt side included the loan from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and $20 million from the Doris Duke Foundation, a longtime TNC supporter. An additional $68.5 million came from a mix of individuals, foundations and family funds. TNC, which contributed to the purchase, did not disclose the names of the other investors.
A separate $22.5 million came from earned carbon credits. The previous owners had enrolled forests in a cap-and-trade climate change mitigation program operated by the California Air Resources Board.
TNC’s Meade, who has a forestry background, said potential Cumberland Forest lenders weren’t exactly champing at the bit in 2017 when negotiations started. Buying in required a $1 million minimum payment. Only investors who already had a relationship with the nonprofit were courted. TNC officials had one-on-one meetings with about 400 candidates.
“When we’d have 20 no’s in a row, we wondered if we were ever going to get the money,” Meade said. “We kept our heads down and kept plowing through negotiations. I think their expectations were pretty low. Some who threw money in said: ‘If we make money, OK. If not, that’s OK, too.’”
Thus far, he said, payments to donors from revenue streams such as timber sales, carbon credits and sales of conservation easements are minute compared with their original investments.
TNC acquired the Virginia portion, the Highlands, from The Forestland Group in July 2019 and the Kentucky-Tennessee section, known as Ataya, from Corrigan TLP in April of that year. Both are private timber investment management organizations.
The acquisition of the Highlands property appealed to TNC because more than 39,000 acres overlapped with an extensive preservation project along the free-flowing Clinch and Powell rivers that the nonprofit originated in the early 1990s.
A string of diverse nature preserves along these tributaries of the Tennessee River harbors habitat for the highest concentrations of globally rare and imperiled fish and freshwater mussels nationwide. Mussels keep the water clean by filtering it for food.
Scientists call the region a “climate stronghold” because its varying elevations offer essential refuges for at-risk animals. “That mature, successful and multifaceted Clinch Valley program put us in the position to launch something as ambitious as the Cumberland Forest,” Kreps said.
Managing a broad spectrum of activities across 253,000 sprawling, mountainous acres is a juggling act for the 20 or so TNC full- and part-time employees. Assignments vary from wading into streams to monitor rare mussels, tramping through snowy forests to accompany auditors verifying tree growth, and driving to rural towns and counties to meet and listen to mayors and community leaders.
“Yes, it’s a challenge,” Kreps said. “But that’s part of the excitement. The way the investment fund is set up, we have a time frame of 10 to 12 years, so that motivates us to do everything we can.”
The relatively short turnaround planned for this colossal purchase is novel — TNC often hangs on to its prized properties for decades.
Here, the idea is to sell it to a like-minded buyer, which could well be an organization similar to The Forestland Group or Corrigan TLP. TNC wants any buyer to honor open-space and public-access commitments in a purchase agreement. Investors will receive a return from the proceeds of the sale.
Yes, it’s a challenge. But that’s part of the excitement.
— Brad Kreps, TNC— Brad Kreps, TNC
“It’s possible the deal can go longer than 10 years,” Meade said. “But this is not going to be a 50-year project for us.”
Kreps emphasized that TNC’s long-term commitment in Southwest Virginia won’t waver after the Cumberland Forest is sold.
“We all live here, so the work we’re doing is deeply personal,” he said.
Even with some federal funding for the project potentially in jeopardy because of Trump administration policy reversals, Meade said a possible recession is a more pressing concern. So much of the revenue, from carbon credits to timber sales, is tied to a thriving economy.
“On the environment front, we’re not going to change what we’re doing on the ground based on what’s happened in Washington over the last 60 days,” he said in mid-March.
Critics sense mission drift
Such an expansive and atypical enterprise, of course, has its critics.
UVA-Wise associate professor of biology Wally Smith has been one of the most vocal. He is also vice president of the Clinch Coalition, a local organization formed in 1998 to challenge clear-cutting in Southwest Virginia.
Smith argues that TNC has lost sight of its overarching mission with the Cumberland Forest acquisition.
“With this behemoth, the vibe at TNC now is, ‘How can we make money?”
— Wally Smith, UVA Wise associate professor
“With this behemoth, the vibe at TNC now is, ‘How can we make money?’” Smith said, ticking off potential income streams such as carbon offsets, solar installations and ATV trails. “Every initiative they have is tied to them getting a check. Is that in the spirit of conservation?”
He called the private equity investment approach “antithetical” to how TNC operated its Clinch Valley Program, with transparency about its plans for optimizing forest management and keeping streams clean.
In tandem with that concern, Smith, an Appalachian salamander specialist, also questioned why Virginia lent TNC $20 million to help the organization acquire 22,856 acres of the Highlands in Russell County.
The conservation easement, overseen by the state, limits disturbance along the Clinch River and the banks of the wooded tract’s 87 miles of streams.
It was the largest open-space easement purchase in Virginia’s history, and then-Gov. Ralph Northam lauded the “unique partnership” with TNC when it was announced in August 2019.
Locke Ogens, TNC’s state director at the time, added that the deal marked “the first example of how The Nature Conservancy aims to work with partners to protect critical pieces of the property for the long term.”
Preserving natural resources is a top target of the low-interest clean water revolving loan fund administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
TNC is making regular payments on the $20.1 million loan, which is scheduled to reach maturity in August 2039, according to DEQ spokeswoman Irina Calos.
While TNC is meeting its obligations to the state, environmentalists claim the nonprofit hasn’t lived up to its promise to local communities. Smith’s Clinch Coalition was among 10 environmental and social equity groups in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee that sent a letter to Kreps in February 2024, contending that the design and reach of TNC’s Community Fund fell short on addressing environmental justice issues.
The groups argued that TNC should be distributing grants to “low-income, economically disadvantaged communities that face environmental injustices from the legacy of resource extraction on or near the Cumberland Forest Project.”
However, impact investors outside Central Appalachia have praised TNC for distributing fossil fuel royalties to grassroots proposals.
Peter Stein, co-founder of the Conservation Finance Network, complimented TNC for sharing that income stream instead of using it to pay for the property.
“What the Conservancy is doing with those royalties is noteworthy,” said Stein, managing director of the Lyme Timber Co. in New Hampshire. “It’s a connected piece of the impact investing concept.”
The more than $1 million generated for the tri-state Community Fund thus far is a combination of $705,094 in royalties TNC has received from coal and gas companies still active on the properties and $310,000 in philanthropic donations, Kreps said.
In accordance with the ownership structure common in Central Appalachia, TNC owns what is above ground, but unrelated third parties retain subsurface mineral rights. As stipulated by deeds, mining royalties are paid to surface owners. A substantial source of royalty money is generated from waste-coal reclamation projects in Virginia.
Since 2021, separate entities in each state that review applications and distribute money have funded 40-plus projects collectively. UVA-Wise administers the grants in Virginia.
Smith and others argued that the Virginia grants should be destined for giant undertakings in towns where residents’ health and pocketbooks have been directly compromised by the demise of coal, but they haven’t outlined specifics.
However, Shannon Blevins, a vice chancellor at UVA-Wise, countered that a regional approach, including all seven coalfield counties, was fairer than a hyperlocal one.
“There just aren’t funding sources for these types of smaller nascent projects,” she said about the regional approach. “This fund filled that gap. Plus, it can lay the groundwork for communities pursuing bigger money from other sources.”
Over four years, the university has distributed $340,000 in TNC grants to 28 Virginia projects. The wide-ranging list includes adding irrigation systems and compost facilities at community gardens, supporting a summer camp for students, improving hiking and biking trails, outfitting a nature center with an HVAC system, planting native trees and renovating playgrounds.
Balancing conservation priorities with the people’s needs is tricky as the region inches toward a more diverse economy, Kreps said. “We can’t do all of this overnight,” he added. “We know it’s not perfect. It keeps evolving.”
One place where TNC’s intentions are resonating is Buchanan County, where Virginians near and far are embracing the return of an iconic species, elk, which is boosting an emerging wildlife tourism economy.
A habitat returns. Will tourists follow?
On the last Saturday in March, Leon Boyd, clad in his signature blue overalls, stood in the bed of his pickup, welcoming 125-plus volunteers to the eighth annual Southwest Virginia Sportsmen work weekend.
Those gathered near the Southern Gap Outdoor Adventure visitor center in Buchanan County were a willing and cheerful mix, ranging from young children to retirees. They arrived raring to tackle tasks such as bucking up fallen trees with chainsaws, painting fences and sheds, collecting trash at an old dump site, clearing rocks from fields, repairing signs and rejuvenating honeybee hives.
The volunteers’ enthusiasm was a reflection of Boyd’s devotion to reviving the grassy, shrubby habitat that now allows elk — and a blossoming tourism niche — to prosper on acreage scarred by decades of strip mining.
TNC became a partner in the elk restoration undertaking with its Cumberland Forest purchase six years ago.
“Having the Conservancy on board is a blessing,” said Boyd, a 58-year-old Grundy native. “I grew up here hunting and exploring. This change has been positive.”
“But if we don’t care, who else is going to? Mother Nature is starting to heal, and we’re helping her.”
— Leon Boyd, Grundy native
Virginia’s “imported” herd has burgeoned beyond 250 elk since 2012, when the state Department of Wildlife Resources began releasing a mix of 75 bulls, cows and calves over several years. The once-common animals disappeared from the eastern U.S. because of overhunting and land use changes. The last elk in Virginia was shot to death in the mid-19th century.
Long before TNC bought the land, Boyd played an indispensable role convincing state authorities that the coalfields in Buchanan — a county lacking parks and public land — could be prime habitat for reintroducing the charismatic megafauna. After lining up elk-receptive landowners, he then persuaded TNC to broaden its commitment by purchasing an additional 1,675 acres smack-dab in the middle of prime elk habitat in 2021 and 2023.
Boyd and two fellow outdoorsmen formed SWVA Sportsmen to solicit donations and rally individuals and companies eager to contribute time. Members and their supporters meet regularly to mechanically rip out swaths of autumn olive, multiflora rose and other pervasive, invasive vegetation planted to stabilize thin soil as closed mines were “reclaimed” by operators following regulations in place at the time.
“It’s a puzzle. And we’re fixing it one piece at a time,” said Boyd, a 40-year employee of a local drilling company whose father worked in the mining and timber industries. “But if we don’t care, who else is going to? Mother Nature is starting to heal, and we’re helping her.”
Mining obliterated the native seed bank, so volunteers regularly outfit their own tractors, bucket loaders and other heavy equipment to dig shallow ponds and orchestrate the sowing of an elk-friendly diet, including wildflowers, Indian grass, big and little bluestem, clover, chicory, timothy and orchard grass.
The core of the DWR’s 2,000-acre elk conservation area radiates from the War Fork viewing site, where a cadre of volunteers at the March gathering set to work painting a railing and shelter. It overlooks the 3-acre site where volunteers built the holding pens to contain the original elk the DWR transported from Kentucky.
Private and public groups have cooperated to oversee tens of thousands of acres of prime elk habitat in the tri-state region. All of that room to roam is also beneficial for deer, turkeys, black bears, songbirds and a host of other native fauna—and, at first, Boyd was caught off guard by the public’s eagerness to travel from miles away to take a peek.
Each autumn, he relishes the booming bellow of male elks clamoring for mates between dusk and dawn.
“Hearing that big noise is so rewarding,” Boyd said. “If you’re close enough, you see all that steam come out.”
He realized the potency of wildlife as a balm for the human soul upon taking a husband and wife to War Fork. At dusk, as the herd emerged, the couple sat silently, entranced. Only later did Boyd learn the husband was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer—and had wanted to see and hear elk before he died.
“I love the outdoors and I love people,” Boyd said. “Wildlife gives them peace of mind that can’t come from money or any other source.”
Last season, he shepherded at least 300 visitors to the property, in a county that now bills itself as Virginia’s elk capital. In 2021, his nonprofit was awarded a $13,000 grant from TNC’s Community Fund to enhance ponds and restore native vegetation around the War Fork site. A follow-up $15,000 grant in 2023 allowed for rehabilitation at some of the other three designated viewing areas.
Visitors expecting to encounter raw mining wounds are shocked that the sites are compatible with conservation, Boyd said.
“I tell them, ‘You’ve been walking around on mine lands for a couple of hours.’ I’m able to show them that the coalfields have so much more to offer than disaster.”
There’s little doubt that most residents, organizations and agencies have united around the Conservancy’s projects and vision. Still, one huge question lingers: Might this coalition splinter after TNC sells the entire Cumberland Forest?
Boyd isn’t speculating yet. And, even though limited hunting is allowed, he no longer has the appetite. “My dad always told me that I’d get to a point as a hunter where you just don’t want to kill,” he said. “I’m there.
“The reward for me is that I get to hunt every day, but with a camera, not a gun.”
Reach Elizabeth McGowan at elizabeth.mcgowan@renewalnews.org