Michael Leonard

Michael’s work as a Senior Real Estate Associate is a continuation of a 32-year volunteer Conservation Fund career as an advisor, member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Board from 2014 to 2019. Michael has focused on such landmark conservation projects in North Carolina as Chimney Rock, Grandfather Mountain, Mount Mitchell State Park , lands adjacent to the Linville Gorge and Shining Rock Wilderness, and lands along the Blue Ridge Parkway and the New River and Horsepasture River.

In Alabama , Michael led efforts to protect land along the Pinhoti Trail, which links Alabama to the Blue Ridge of north Georgia and the Appalachian Trail, land along the canyon rims in Little River Canyon National Preserve, ancient mountaintop longleaf pine forests around Flagg Mountain , remaining private inholdings in the Sipsey Wilderness and tracts adjacent to Cheaha Mountain, the highest point in Alabama. In Georgia, Michael worked on protecting land along the Pinhoti Trail. Michael also worked in historic land conservation and was involved in protecting Revolutionary War-era National Historic Landmark lands at Bethania near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and at Hayes Manor near Edenton, as well as protecting historic land at Fort Raleigh, the site of the Lost Colony in Dare County,  and at the site of a 19th century Episcopal Mission in Valle Crucis in Watauga County. Michael also assisted in protecting tracts at the site of the former Cherokee towns visited by William Bartram in the 1770s — Cowee and Watoga.

Michael led an effort to protect the site of Fort Blakely in Alabama where African American troops overran Confederate entrenchments in a Union Victory in 1865. In Georgia , Michael played a role in nearly doubling the acreage of protected land at the Chief Vann House State Historic Site, a key location on the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail at Spring Place, Georgia.