Piedmont Environmental Council internship by Environmental Studies major at the University of Richmond

2.  The PEC (Piedmont Environmental Council) is a non-
profit organization with offices throughout the Piedmont
region of Virginia
 Their region lies within 9 counties of Virginia including
Greene, Madison, Orange, Rappahannock, Loudon,
Clarke, Culpepper, Fauquier and Albemarle

3. PEC states their mission as “Promoting
and protecting the natural resources, rural
economy, history and beauty of the Virginia
Piedmont”
 Source: https://www.pecva.org/about/our-mission

4. PEC has many sectors within their
organization and cover many different
issues
They work within topics of clean water,
land conservation, energy, historic and
scenic landscaping, wildlife restoration,
political lobbying, and working with farms
and local food outreach

5. One of PEC’s main way to conserve land
within the Piedmont is through
Conservation Easements
The President, Chris Miller, spoke to us
saying their goal was ultimately to
conserve a million acres within the
piedmont, with having over 450,000 acres
conserved as of today

6.  A big part of our first few weeks with the PEC
fellowship was learning about the organization and
what they do along with what Conservation
Easements were
 Essentially, a Conservation Easement is a binding
document that the land owner signs that in short
says no development will occur on the parcel of
land, and this agreement follows the land even if
the current owner sells the parcel of land
 However, you still obtain all the same rights for
recreation once you put a conservation easement
on your land and you receive tax benefits as well

7. The Fellowship lasted a total of 7 weeks
where we stayed in Warrenton, Va
The first 5 weeks was spent learning about
what each section within the organization
did along with daily fieldtrips and field work
to give us a hands on experience for what
the employees do on a daily basis

8. Some of the field trips and field work we
did included
 Hiking the Shenandoah National Park
 Kayaking the Rapidan River
 Working with and on local farms and learning about their agriculture business models
(Ex: Local farm that grows their own hops that they use to brew their own beer, with
the brewery located on the farm)
 Mock city planning activities (We were given a blank sheet of paper and had to plan
an urban expansion)
 Mock City Council Trial
 Richmond field trip to the capital
 Charlottesville visit about affordable housing
 Visiting local land owned by PEC and leased out to ranchers (Got to experience and
learn about sustainable Ag. Methods that PEC implements)

9. Sunrise Hike: Shenandoah National Park Kayaking Trip on the Rapidan River

10. Hands on City Planning Activity
Field Trip to local farm

11. Local Farm: Primarily growing tomatoes
Mock Trial City Council

12. The last 2 weeks of the fellowship we did
what is called practicum work
During these 2 weeks we worked on an
independent project of our choice that fell
in the category of something PEC would
handle

13. For my Practicum Project I worked with the
Clifton Institute, a neighboring research
parcel of land, to track, locate and chart
invasive plant species and catalog as
many flora and fauna species we could
locate on the grounds using an app called
iNaturalist
This fell under the habitat conservation
sector of what PEC does

14. Specifically I marked all locations of
Japanese Honey Suckle and Ailanthus
(Tree of Heaven)
Once we had the data of the locations of
these invasive species we created GIS
maps of locations of the invasive species
which would be able to help predict where
the invasive species might spread

15. Ailanthus Tree
Source: https://www.123rf.com/photo_74473836_stock-
vector-japanese-honeysuckle-lonicera-japonica-
medicinal-plant.html

16.  After we finished the practicum work. We each had to
present our projects and what we did to the staff of
PEC
 Overall this experience of the PEC fellowship was
incredible
 They work within a broad spectrum of what they do
and cover as an organization
 This fellowship allowed me and the others to
experience everything the environmental sector has to
offer from environmental policy and lobbying to habitat
conservation
 This fellowship also allowed me to take a look into how
non-profits work as well compared to the private sector