New Head of Virginia Land Trust - All In On Easements

New Head of Virginia Land Trust - All In On Easements

By Leonard Shapiro

Ashton Cole had no idea what he wanted to do after graduating from the University of Mary Washington with a degree in International Affairs twenty years ago. He thought about teaching, worked as a camp counselor and “bounced around a little” before taking a job with a Leesburg attorney who specialized in handling easements for his clients.

Ashton didn’t know much about the process at that time, though years later he eventually learned that his father, the late Geoffrey Cole, a former Commonwealth’s Attorney for Clarke County, had actually donated an easement on their family cattle farm on Lockes Mill Road in Clarke County, months prior to his death when Ashton was only 17. One of his dad’s longtime friends, Bob Lee, then the Director of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, had convinced Ashton’s father it would be a good idea six months before he passed away unexpectedly from an aneurism at age 50. A few years later, Ashton became very familiar with the easement process both at that Leesburg law firm, and when his godfather, Chris Dematatis, joined the board of the Middleburg-based Land Trust of Virginia (LTV) in 2005.

At that point, Ashton’s interest in local land conservation had become firmly planted, and when the opportunity arose to work with LTV, he jumped on it, and hasn’t looked back.

Ashton, who lives in Bluemont with his wife Louise, and their three young children, started as a part-time LTV employee in 2007. Six months later, he was named as the full-time Stewardship Coordinator for the non-profit. Fast forward to 2023, and Ashton, after a long stretch as LTV’s Director of Conservation and Stewardship, succeeded retiring Sally Price as the organization’s new executive director on January 1.

Ashton admitted he needed a little convincing to take on that leadership role, only because “I loved the work I was doing so much. To risk changing that, I hadn’t really considered it, since there would be a lot more administrative, fundraising, and other management involved which hadn’t been my typical beat. But it was Sally’s judgement I’d be a good fit, and she talked me into it. I’m glad she did, because I love the new role, and I love our team even more.

Ashton Cole, the new executive director of the Land Trust of Virginia.

Photo © by Leonard Shapiro

“Despite 15 years at LTV, this is my first time at the helm, and there are quite a number of things I’m still experiencing for the first time, but it’s been great, especially with the dedicated folks I’m surrounded by. There are so many talented people on our board and on our staff, and no one was going to let me fail. This is truly a team effort. And Sally has now joined our Board, which I’m very happy about.”

LTV has 242 properties in easement and is currently working on about 20 more. The vast majority are in Loudoun, Fauquier and surrounding counties, and in recent years, it’s expanded to serve numerous new counties across the state, a trend Ashton intends to continue.

According to the LTV, “conservation easements protect open space, farms, forests, rivers, streams, battlefields, vistas and historic sites in perpetuity… What changes is that the land itself is protected from development forever.”

“We’re going to try to keep on track with what we’ve been doing.” Ashton said. “We’ll continue to protect land in the northern Piedmont, but there are other parts of the state that are under-served, especially in the southwest, so we need to be prepared to work in those areas as well.

“We also have an initiative that’s focused on the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Trail corridor,” he said. “It’s in our own back yard and it’s highly vulnerable, with a high percentage of it still unprotected. With ever present and often increasing development pressure, we definitely can’t rely on zoning to do the job. The permanency of easements is what works, and what inspires me, and that remains unchanged.”