Additionally, in its consulting capacity Appalachian provides outstanding value to its non-profit and corporate clients in the areas of real estate consultation, project planning, project development, project-specific fundraising, and environmental and agricultural policy and regulation.

Appalachian’s project planning and development services are especially beneficial to non-profit conservation organizations that seek an experienced guiding hand with obtaining project-specific local, state, federal, and foundation support.

Appalachian specializes in developing projects that combine for-profit methods with conservation goals, a growing trend in the environmental protection and agricultural sectors.

Our Methods

Appalachian will protect working landscapes by using “smart growth” techniques such as dense planning and conservation easements on large lots, as well as by generating environmental credits like carbon sequestration credits. By purchasing land outright as a private buyer, and having no legal or charter restrictions on the disposition of the land, Appalachian Land & Conservation Services Co., LLC has the ability and flexibility to purchase and protect real estate at a much higher rate than land trusts or government agencies. As a result, Appalachian is able to use creative and entrepreneurial means to achieve conservation goals while still pursuing the profit motive, a powerful incentive for doing the right thing. It is a classic example of “Doing well by doing good.” It is possible for Appalachian to use this model because donating endowed conservation easements on large parcels to land trusts, on every parcel it re-sells, allows the company to take significant tax deductions, thereby often coming close to making up the difference in returns in what it could have made using expensive, traditional and destructive cookie-cutter development models.

The Benefits

Everyone benefits from this pragmatic approach: The public, land trusts, wildlife and those who enjoy watching or pursuing it, and public service providers. By allowing only very limited and well-designed land development, while retaining nearly all of the pre-existing natural character of the land, Appalachian helps landowners re-connect with the land in a healthy way. Watersheds and scenic viewsheds are permanently protected. Service costs to the public are typically reduced, and land that might have been further developed in the future becomes protected forever and scenically available to the public while still allowing a place for people to live and recreate. Finally, a quality product is the inevitable result. Most development models use “cookie-cutter” lot layouts that maximize the number of lots and minimize the amount of protected open space around them. These development models destroy the very beauty that attracted people to a particular location or region in the first place, and they preclude a sense of community. But they are nonetheless ubiquitous, primarily because few home buyers are presented with an environmentally friendly alternative, and few developers are willing to try something new. Appalachian takes a radically different approach, and as a result everyone wins. Whenever possible, Appalachian turns over land it acquires to a public agency, such as the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

What Motivates Us

Passion for America’s rural and scenic landscapes and culture, and its historic sites, is what motivates us. These places inspire us and shape our cultural values every day; they make us distinctly American. Also, an absolute commitment to and confidence in free market capitalism. And finally, a belief that the profit motive is and can be a powerful tool for good and that combining profit with charity is the wisest and healthiest model for implementing capitalism.

“Our country is about more than the success of our economic enterprise, and it is that more that keeps us strong: our moral vigor, determination, and grit, our openness and generosity. The vastness of [America’s] lands has harbored the vastness of the American spirit, and our people will not part with either easily. And they shouldn't.” — Theodore Roosevelt IV, Boston Globe Op-Ed, Sept. 2001