|June 25, 1990||Fauquier County||Piedmont Chapter|
A portion of the G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area (WMA) was designated as the first VNPS Registry site in 1990.
Under an agreement with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (now the Department of Wildlife Resources), VNPS and DGIF agreed to work together to protect flora including a portion of the WMA containing an exceptional diversity of valuable native plants. A population here of Trillium grandiflorum, the VNPS 1996 Wildflower of the Year, is the most outstanding in Virginia. The state endangered Trillium cernum, nodding trillium, is also found here.
Conservation action led by VNPS resulted in the successful preservation and conservation of significant natural areas in the WMA. From the March, 2001 VNPS Bulletin:
In 1990, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries entered into a project to log the forest in the G. Richard Thompson Wildlife Management Area. This would have involved the big-wheeled logging trucks crossing the massive trillium display area. The prospect of this destruction alarmed the Virginia Native Plant Society and the wheels of conservation action rushed to get ahead of the 18-wheelers. Thus the trillium fields of the Thompson WMA in Fauquier County became our first Registry Site.
From the August, 1990 VNPS Bulletin:
A favorite haunt for wildflower enthusiasts for generations, the Thompson has been especially renowned for its dense stands of Trillium grandiflorum. Piedmont Chapter’s Gary Fleming, whose field work over recent years has resulted in the most comprehensive existing report on the Thompson’s flora, estimates that there are over 14,000 trillium plants per acre there.
G. Richard Thompson WMA is in northwestern Fauquier County