More than $2 Million in Grant Funding to Friends of the Rappahannock Has Been Terminated or Frozen
The grants had been awarded by the U.S. Forest Service and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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About $2.5 million in grant funding awarded to the Friends of the Rappahannock has been either terminated or frozen, the organization learned last month.
“And I will say that we have identified several other grants that we consider at risk,” FOR’s executive director, Daria Christian, said this week. “[These grants are for] a couple more million. So it’s a lot.”
The grant that has been terminated was for $939,000. It was an urban and community forestry grant awarded by the U.S. Forest Service to the Arbor Day Foundation and then to FOR.
Christian said FOR worked with the Rappahannock Tribe to allocate $300,000 from this grant to support forest stewardship on the tribe’s ancestral lands in Richmond County. Altogether, the grant would have allowed FOR to plant thousands of trees in the York and Rappahannock River watersheds. It also supported staff compensation through the end of 2026.
FOR learned on February 21 that this grant had been terminated, Christian said, and the organization has cancelled several tree planting projects as a result.
A second grant for $1.57 million has been frozen, Christian said. This grant was awarded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as part of the Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction program and was meant to launch a new “silvopasture” program.
Silvopasture, according to the U.S. Forest Service, is a practice that integrates trees and grazing animals—including cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and chickens—on the same land.
“One of the main advantages of silvopasture systems is reducing heat stress in livestock, which improves animal performance and well-being,” the USFS website states. “Silvopastures can increase wildlife diversity … and improve water quality. The forage protects the soil from water and wind erosion, while adding organic matter to improve soil properties.”
FOR’s grant would have launched a new local silvopasture program. It also would have expanded the James River Buffer program—which helps landowners install riparian buffers on their properties at no cost and maintains them for three years—into the Rappahannock and York watersheds.
The now-frozen grant would have funded staff time through 2028, as well as subawards to the Piedmont Environmental Council, the American Farmland Trust, and the Virginia Cooperative Extension.
Both the frozen and terminated grants had been “fully executed and contracts signed,” Christian said. FOR has already spent about $80,000 of the terminated $939,000 urban and community forestry grant, she said, and is now trying to recoup what has been spent.
Christian said FOR has “no way of knowing why” the grants were frozen or terminated.
“They don’t tell us any reason why,” she said. “I don’t think the grantors saw this coming either. I think everybody was caught flat footed.”
Federal grants include funding to cover overhead or administrative costs, which is known as the “indirect rate.” Christian stressed that while these indirect rates can be high for legitimate reasons, FOR’s are “the minimum amount—10%. You can’t get less than that.”
Christian said FOR is shifting funds around to account for the lost and frozen revenue.
“We usually budget with two-to-three years in mind, so a lot of our grants are multi-year,” she said. “This means we’re having to shift and crunch, so we’re now looking at just one year out. We had a lot going on because we were planning around these contracts, and just to have them pulled out from under us is a big deal.”
She continued, “Our number one goal is to keep staff employed. The last thing we want to do is furlough or lay people off.”
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We Virginians and Americans in general are only beginning to realize the pain of these cuts. If heads aren't spinning they should be. Watch your Social Security, folks.