St. Mary’s County, MD— The Southern Maryland Resource, Development and Conservation and the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust have been awarded $1,130,367 from the Maryland Rural Legacy Program for agriculture land preservation in St. Mary’s County. These funds will be use to leverage and additional $1.9M in local government funding and also used to match the Navy’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program which has over $15M to put toward land preservation to protect NAS Patuxent River from development encroachment.
“These grants provide a cost-effective way to permanently conserve culturally, ecologically and historically important parcels of land in our state,” said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary Mark Belton. “Protecting and preserving these important and irreplaceable tracts of land helps us retain our agricultural and rural character.
Established in 1997, the Rural Legacy Program is designed to preserve large tracts of productive and valuable agricultural and forested lands that contain exceptional features by working with willing property owners in locally-designated rural areas situated in every county. St. Mary’s County has two Rural Legacy Areas: Mattapany and Huntersville. Between the two areas, 22,651 acres of land have been permanently preserved. For more information about agriculture land preservation, contact Donna Sasscer, Manager, Agriculture and Seafood Division, St. Mary’s County Department of Economic Development at 240-309-4021 or donna.sasscer@stmarysmd.com.
