Chestnut Ridge Natural Area Preserve
wildlife refuge in Virginia, USA
Chestnut Ridge Natural Area Preserve is a Natural Area Preserve located in Giles and Bland counties, Virginia. A 1,596-acre (646 ha) tract of old-growth forest, it is dominated by northern red oak and chestnut oak. The extent of unbroken forest on the property is unusual for southwestern Virginia; many of the trees, including cucumber magnolia and American basswood, are between three and four hundred years old.
The preserve was privately owned from its establishment in 2006 until 2020, when the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation purchased the property.
In May 2023, the preserve expanded by 775 acres to its current size, adding 1.5 miles of riparian forest along Dry Fork, a stream that contains native trout.
The public source identifies “Chestnut Ridge Natural Area Preserve” as wildlife refuge in Virginia, USA. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chestnut, Ridge and Natural.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5093982. Authority coordinates are 37.411, -78.621. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 2020 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chestnut Ridge Natural Area Preserve” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.