2019 Schedule

Panelists will offer a range of options for land trusts to consider for acknowledging, honoring and sharing the history of the land we conserve. Participants will learn how their organizations can take steps to open up an organizational conversation on what measures should be taken to understand and avoid the perpetuation of historical injustices. Areas of opportunity for responsible decision-making to this end include: land ownership, land use, land access, education, programming, partnerships, hiring and board recruitment.

Climate-change-related flooding and damage - such as those brought by hurricanes Maria and Florence - are often most keenly felt by low-income communities and communities of color. Why are these communities so often in harm's way? Low-lying land is cheap to develop - until it's not. Housing land trusts, concerned with people's health and safety, have a mission of providing safe, affordable homes in perpetuity. Conservation land trusts seek ways to protect floodplains and other natural land buffers, in perpetuity. Housing and conservation groups have a common interest: put development where it belongs and protect land from being developed where that is not in the best interest of people or nature. Housing and conservation organizations have different and complementary perspectives on disaster response and recovery. What can they offer each other to ensure low-income communities and communities of color have safer places to live? What can communities do now, before the next disaster strikes, to be more prepared and more resilient? How can these important conversations be mindful of the intended or unintended consequences of urban renewal, redlining, and predatory contract-for-deed agreements? And how can they be respectful of complex heirs property rights and deep personal and cultural ties to land? A cross-disciplinary panel discussion will tease out some of the difficult, critical issues related to these questions, seeking common ground in service to people and place.

Taking visitors on a land trust property can be easy and fun. Be it intentional or not, successful property tours often incorporate elements of community conservation. In this session, participants will learn some benefits of integrating community conservation into land trust programming, drawing on guidelines established by the Land Trust Standards and Practices. The discussion will focus on community engagement, with connections to community conservation made explicit. Participants will participate in a number of effective, hands-on activities that introduce conservation concepts to communities of all ages. These activities are easily adaptable for any staff at any land trust in any location. This engaging and educational experience will inspire participants to approach community engagement in new ways. Participants will walk away ready to hit the ground running with a Land Trust Customized Toolkit for Community Conservation.

Family land ownership has always been a significant source of intergenerational wealth across the country. For land trusts, protecting family owned land in their service areas has many conservation and related benefits. Still, family property owned as heirs property, i.e. with multiple owners, outwardly presents obstacles for conservation. Through this session, participants will gain an understanding of the legal structure of heirs property, the values around this ownership model and opportunities for engagement with heirs property owners that support natural resource conservation and community. This engaging workshop will provide a cultural and historical context of why families own property as heirs property, demystify the legal structure of heirs property ownership, consider strategies to stabilize ownership and then look at ways land trusts can engage with heirs property owners to protect natural resources on their land through best practices, conservation easements, and acquisitions. Participants will learn about asset mapping as a tool for community level support and engagement with heirs property owners.

The focus in recent years by land trusts on community conservation has led to increased awareness of and emerging partnerships with North America’s First communities and their efforts to conserve culturally important places. While momentum is gaining, the necessary funding to complete these often-expensive projects, however has been surprisingly difficult to secure. This highly interactive, roundtable discussion among land trusts, entities with Indigenous focused projects and some funders, will be a chance to shed light on the difficulties, talk about the needs and the opportunities and suggest ideas on how we can all work together to accelerate the conservation of these special places.

Common Ground is a Land Trust Alliance listening and learning initiative that seeks to create a dynamic exchange of information and ideas with land trusts, conservation advocates, and new audiences to better understand how conservation can be more inclusive, responsive, and relevant to a population that reflects America’s reality today and tomorrow. The initiative is an important first step in learning about models of community conservation that address conservation challenges while ensuring that all people and communities share in the benefits of conservation. In this participatory session, facilitators will both share and collect insights about inclusive models of community conservation.

Close-to-home access to green space improves community health, increases community cohesion, and provides critical green infrastructure. Often small towns and urban areas with the most limited access to parks also face the biggest challenges with poverty, health inequity and risks from environmental disasters and climate change. Presenters will discuss how land trusts can help build more resilient communities through equity-driven community engagement that helps set conservation priorities and create welcoming parks and open spaces that incorporate local cultural and natural history. The presenters will share lessons from two projects reflecting very different communities and scales. First, the Taos Land Trust’s creation of a community park that fosters cultural education, wetland and acequia restoration, and building connections among ethnically diverse community members. And second, a community-based and equity-driven park and open space planning process that took place in Harris County, Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Throughout this interactive session, participants will learn about, and use, innovative engagement strategies (including real-time, phone-based polling) for reaching diverse and underserved community members. This session will provide attendees with a strong foundation in the importance of equitable access to open space and toolkit full of techniques to deepen their approach to community engagement.

The 1772 Foundation, Madison Morgan Conservancy and Historic Macon Foundation are at the forefront of testing a new model for community conservation. The fields of land conservation and historic preservation have been operating in discrete siloes in the United States. Yet, in the UK, these fields are blended into one organization that protects special places of all kinds. The broad-based support created by their blended conservation work is extraordinary. We would like to see that model more fully explored in the U.S. Our three groups have been exploring blended community conservation efforts through a new framework. Using facilitated community visioning sessions and GIS mapping, we are working on programs that will create integrated whole-community maps, helping citizens from all walks of life to identify and visualize high-priority areas that reflect the character of each unique community. This process is driven solely by the desires of the residents - to protect what matters to them, both land and buildings. The 1772 Foundation has provided over $16 million in funding over the past 10 years to land conservation and revolving funds. It is our goal to explore how we might combine these two efforts using citizen-driven data and holistic maps to create "revolving funds for special places." We believe that blended conservancies based on data asset mapping is an important model to consider if we are to fully rally people people behind holistic community conservation.

As the composition of our nation continues to diversify, the conservation movement must include the voices of people who aren’t traditionally “included” in conservation conversations. While the conservation movement has been working on diversity efforts for decades, the percentage of people of color on the boards or staff of land trusts is minimal and retention rates are low.This session will examine how race, class and gender has influenced the U.S. conservation movement and how to move forward in a manner that proactively changes the landscape. Our intent for this workshop is to spur a meaningful conversation about how the land trust community can take the steps to diversify at all levels, including within the Land Trust Alliance, at the local level and through engaging community partners. All participants will leave with a list of resources, which will provide them with tools to learn more about the importance of diversity in the environmental movement and how to bring about change. This workshop will be led by members of “Conservationists of Color,” a robust organization comprised of people of color working within the conservation movement and allies committed to equity and change.

The K-12 Community of Practice was launched in 2018 in partnership with Land Trust Alliance to foster the school-based community conservation efforts of land trusts all over the country. A subsequent survey taken by over 220 land trusts identified a matrix of needs and the desire for a platform for better addressing those needs. Identified needs included planning tools, curriculum resources, training, coaching, communication, program templates, and other qualities of support. The K-12 Community of Practice Network is that platform. The Network will enable every land trust to have access to all national practitioners, the best curated resources available, affinity groups to better network around issues such as climate change, program type, service population, geographic context, land trust capacity, partnership models, and more. This will be the most effective tool you will ever need. This workshop will provide an introduction, practice and full access to the network. This network will bring every land trust from every context together in absolute inclusion to better support our efforts to support every child to develop a life long relationship to land and learning.

As the racial demographics of the nation shift, more land trusts are talking about the importance of racial diversity. “Diversity” and “equity” have become ubiquitous buzzwords in many conference rooms, often used interchangeably, but what does it mean practically for a land trust to commit to racial diversity, let alone equity? Through a combination of presentation and interactive small group discussions, we will explore how to move beyond diversity trainings to lasting organizational transformation. At the conclusion of the session, participants will be equipped with a framework to guide their land trust’s equity development and a better understanding of the phases of organizational race equity practice, including common pitfalls and strategies to avoid them.

Featured in the Women in Conservation issue of Saving Land in 2018, Little Forks Conservancy has worked to create inclusive programming that breaks down barriers and introduces conservation to today’s youth. The Nature/Nurture program, working with roots in mindfulness, teaches important aspects of conservation practices like stewardship, climate change, understanding and battling invasive species, wildlife habitat and how to personally connect with the outdoors. All students plan and complete a service project, and learn how to be an important and helpful part of their community. In this session, attendees will learn how through the importance of strong leadership, community partnerships and an inclusive staff mindset, land trusts can appeal to the next generation of conservationists by bringing an appreciation of nature and the outdoors to under-served youth and adults. Working within alternative school spaces has proven to bring an element of diversity and inclusion to what has traditionally been an activity and passion for Caucasian males. In order to bring new voices and diverse individuals to conservation, land trusts need to start thinking outside the box and meeting people where they are at. As a small land trust, Little Forks Conservancy has created partnerships throughout the community that allow their five person staff to do the work of a much larger organization.

Using case studies and existing examples from the metro-Chicago area, this session will relay creative, land-based climate change solutions and programs to boost community resilience while concurrently reducing the risk of impacts. In 2017 the Nature Conservancy demonstrated that nature-based solutions could provide 37% of carbon dioxide mitigation by 2030 as required to meet the goal of less than 2° C as outlined by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Similarly, a growing body of research shows that impoverished and under-resourced communities will be most impacted by climate change. This session will both explore the suite of land-based solutions to climate change and examine the prevalence of climate change impacts on under-resourced communities in the Chicago Wilderness area. Case studies will include planning strategies for increasing greenway restoration and protection in the Calumet, schoolyard gardens to relieve chronic neighborhood flooding, community tree planting and maintenance, and quantifying community economic benefits of restoration. Exhibiting techniques, practices, strategies and programs, from the work of Openlands and others, this presentation will also detail the multiple co-benefits that both allow for and provide community resilience in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This session will present inclusive strategies and models which demonstrate the social, economic, and environmental advantages linked with executing land-based solutions to climate change.

There are some things you just don’t talk about at the dinner table. Today, we’ll add land to the list. The focus of this session is to challenge our traditional conservation paradigm by measuring our success through community impact not acres. In a world faced with a profound sense of urgency to act, there is no free ride. Social justice issues, climate change and human health impact everyone, and solutions will take community wide participation. We believe that Community Conservation is the intersection between our social responsibilities and our ecological obligations. For the past three years the Montezuma Land Conservancy (MLC) has been working with an 18-member community coalition (the Montezuma Inspire Coalition) and a local alternative high school to elevate youth voices, create youth pathways to careers and incorporate broad diversity, equity and inclusion strategies into our community programming. This process has taught us all valuable lessons about network leadership, and what it means to redefine our role as a land trust. More importantly it has taught us what it means to truly be part of our community. Our organization has faced challenges, overcome obstacles, and grown in unexpected ways. Join us and our partners at the table for this interactive session where we will explore collaboration, inclusivity and an innovative approach to moving the conservation needle forward.

We will explore the journey of UCAN (Urban Community AgriNomics) in creating the Catawba Trail Farm, an Agriculture Education Center. Starting with the evolving relationship with Triangle Land Conservancy and lessons learned we will delve into the elements UCAN attributes to its success. The art of juggling: land clearing, wood cutting, building restoration and fundraising while engaging the community. The joy of providing access and teaching others to raise their own vegetables, live healthier lives and connect academic to agriculture. This session will look at the benefits of embracing and promoting intergenerational learning. Who and what does it take! Finally we will address the question: Where do we go from here, are there opportunities, will or thoughts of how to create opportunities that have a pathway leading to equity?