The Buffalo Mountain Natural Area Preserve is a popular destination along the Blue Ridge in Floyd County, home to a 2-mile trail to a rounded summit with 360-degree views of the surrounding mountains.
Now, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation has leveraged its partnership with The Conservation Fund to grow the preserve by an additional 975 acres, bringing its total size to more than 2,100 acres.
"Buffalo Mountain itself hosts a number of species that are rare," says Heather Richards, the Conservation Fund's Virginia state director and Mid-Atlantic vice president. "There are one or two species that are pretty much only found there. And it's partly because it is just a very high place with a very unique geology. By expanding the natural area preserve we are protecting those species and adding habitats that are again rare in this area to permanent protection."
Buffalo Mountain is one of 70 natural area preserves in the state, and it's notable for its combination of forest, wetlands, grasslands and balds.
"The mountain itself is created by sort of unusual rocks," says Rob Evans, natural area protection manager for the DCR's Division of Natural Heritage. "They're high in certain minerals and erosion resistant. Those rocks are really rich and create some unusual growing conditions."
Those unusual mafic rocks make Buffalo Mountain home to two specific types of habitat that are pretty rare in the state: rich cove forests, which are concave formations that are home to a lot of tree species, and seeps, where groundwater seeps out of the ground. Those habitats make Buffalo Mountain and surrounding land home to 18 rare species, such as the alder-leafed buckthorn.
"Lots of places have a single rare species or something very significant, but there's not a lot of sites in the state that have a large, large aggregation of them," Evans says. "And so, Buffalo [Mountain] is one of the places where the rare species kind of converge on a site. The elevation and the special rocks and soil that are out there means a lot of the rare species and habitats are there."
The purchase was supported by a $3.6 million grant awarded by the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation and $750,000 from the General Assembly.
