Only 329,348 acres to go.

Last April, Gov. Tim Kaine announced that he wanted to make 400,000 acres of Virginia off-limits to development before he leaves office in 2010. In 2006, Virginia landowners put 70,652 acres under conservation easements.

That's a record, but it's still nearly 30,000 acres short of what needs to be done annually if the governor is going to reach his goal.

"We will not get to 400,000 by just waiting for it to happen, even with a good tax credit," Kaine said last week. "We have to go out and find parcels and arm-twist folks and encourage them and be creative."

Jim Blakeney has been through the process twice now, dealing with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation and New River Land Trust each time. He said no arm-twisting was involved.

"They don't try to persuade you one way or another," Blakeney said. "They just tell you, 'This is what you can do and this is what you can't do.' "

What landowners can do is give up some development rights in exchange for tax incentives. Which development rights people give up depends on the agreement they reach with the land trust. The size of the tax incentive depends on how much the land's value is diminished by the agreement.

People with moderate incomes may not be able to take full advantage of those incentives because the tax breaks may be larger than the taxes they owe, even when they're spread over several years.

But Virginia is one of two states that allow people to sell those tax credits. That's opened the possibility of land conservation to a whole new set of potential donors, according to John Eckman, executive director of the Virginia Conservation Council.

The council is a land trust that has been in this business since 1990. Its territory stretches from Botetourt County down the Shenandoah Valley to the Shenandoah River's confluence with the Potomac. The Western Virginia Land Trust serves 10 counties in the Roanoke and New River valleys. The New River Land Trust serves eight counties in the New River Valley. In 2006, the three helped put 16,163 acres in conservation easements.

The land trusts spend a lot of time on outreach, educating landowners about their options and shepherding them through the easement process. The Virginia Outdoors Foundation, a state agency, usually holds the easements and ensures their enforcement.

Rupert Cutler, a former Roanoke city councilman and a member of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation board, said Monday that Virginia's approach to land conservation -- depending on tax credits and conservation easements instead of buying land outright -- is a conservative and effective course. It protects open space and water quality, while keeping the land on the tax rolls and preserving working farms.

But the easements generally don't give the public access to the land, so Cutler believes the state needs to buy some land no matter how well the conservation easement program is working.

"There needs to be a balance," he said. "We can't do it all, in other words, with conservation easements."

The governor apparently agrees. Kaine's proposed budget includes $20 million for land conservation -- four times the current budget, according to Kaine. Most of that would go toward buying land and easements.

Only four states have more land under conservation easements than Virginia does. But the state is bound by the Chesapeake Bay Compact, a multistate agreement to reduce pollution in the bay, to shield more than 350,000 acres in the bay's watershed from development. And Kaine is bound by his promise to protect 400,000 acres before he leaves office.

"He's depending on us to accomplish a lot of that," the Virginia Outdoor Foundation's Cutler said. "It's really going well, but I think we've got our work cut out for us."

Roger Holnback, executive director of the Western Virginia Land Trust, said his group could have put more land under conservation easements in 2006, but a staff shortage at the Virginia Outdoors Foundation pushed the transactions into this year. If the foundation is going to accomplish the governor's goals, Holnback said, it's going to need more staff and more money.

What the foundation and land trusts have managed to preserve so far is as diverse as it is valuable.

John and Hallie Seibel put their 558-acre Botetourt County farm under easement. The land borders a four-mile stretch of the James River that's been designated a Virginia scenic river.

Blakeney has a different kind of farm.

"I farm for deer, bear and turkey," he said. "That sort of thing."

He harvests some timber, too.

Blakeney put 270 acres under easement in 2003. Now he's added 632 acres that he and partner Mike Bostic own through Poplar Hill LLC. It's full of wildlife, caverns, springs and streams.

"It's beautiful land. ... This is the place I chose to live -- chose to die," Blakeney said.

Three much smaller easements recorded by other landowners in 2006, less than 40 acres each, protect portions of the New River in Giles and Grayson counties.

In Craig County, Lanier and Thecla Frantz put another 125 acres under easement. Added to the 1,100 acres they put under easement in 1990, that means most of their 1,400 acres are closed to development.

The land borders the Jefferson National Forest and Craig Creek.

The Frantzes still lease some of it to a farmer. They still cut timber. They still host a hunt club. They still have New Castle International Gliderport, home to the Blue Ridge Soaring Society. They still live there.

"I spent more of my working life putting together this land," Lanier Frantz said. "I don't want to see it cut up into subdivisions."

Staff writers Jay Conley and Michael Sluss contributed to this report.