A01. Emerging Carbon Offset Opportunities to Protect Forests from Urban to Rural
Small forest landowners - including many land trusts - own a combined 200 million acres across the United States. Opening the carbon market to this segment has the potential to significantly mitigate climate change by facilitating land trusts and partners to conserve more land and steward it effectively to store and remove carbon from the atmosphere. However, the prohibitively high costs of project development, monitoring, reporting, and verification have previously prevented land trusts from participating in the voluntary carbon market. City Forest Credits (CFC) is the national nonprofit carbon registry for greenhouse gas emission reduction and removal for tree projects in or near cities and towns. CFC provides a way for land trusts, local governments, and other entities that manage urban forests to finance conservation projects that contribute to the health and well-being of people and the environment. The American Carbon Registry (ACR) recently adopted a new methodology designed for small landowners to protect forests via deferred harvest on private forest lands. This opportunity is available for land trusts through Finite Carbon’s CORE Carbon platform. In this session, participants will learn about these new and growing opportunities for land trusts to generate significant financial resources from harvest deferral, forest preservation, and reforestation carbon projects on lands up to 5,000 acres and hear from two land trusts near Cleveland and Chattanooga which have developed carbon projects to power their conservation work.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A02. A Brave New World: Adapting Stewardship to Changing Conditions
Stewardship staff, and their respective organizations, have seen their workloads increased by climate change impacts on the land in the past decade. The recently completed Practical Pointer from the Land Trust Alliance – “Adapting Stewardship Administration to Changing Conditions” –provides a guiding framework with suggestions for land trusts navigating this brave new world. Some of the presenters are already dealing with these changing conditions – flooding in the east and fires in the west – and will provide examples of adaption at their land trusts. The resiliency measures in the Practical Pointer apply equally to long term impacts and those with immediate consequences like earthquakes, wildfires, and floods. There will be discussion regarding actions and impacts from each presenter’s organization and region, followed by small group discussions for individual takeaways. Come prepared to think big picture, maybe outside the box, and with an eye towards organizational change.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A03. Aging Gracefully: How to Steward Easements with Dated Language
One of the biggest challenges facing land trusts today is stewarding easements with antiquated language. With properties transferring to successor landowners with increasing frequency and stewardship staff turning over in greater numbers, this an all-too common issue facing land trusts. Join conservation attorney Tamara Galanter, and stewardship staff Joel Cooper and Emily Parish, as they lay out common problems and sensible solutions. In this session, we will cover: how to analyze your portfolio to prepare for growth and change; typical problems with antiquated language; strategies to deal with older easements, including: building strong landowner relationships, when discretionary consent/approvals are appropriate, amendment and restatement of the easement; and when to draw the line and go down the litigation path. We will also examine case studies from two land trusts to see how they have used the various strategies to address problems with older easements.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A04. Ownership Transfer of Conservation Easement Lands: How a Land Trust Can Prepare (CLE)
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A05. Telling Your Story Your Way
We will explore the process that fundamentally offers diverse, underserved communities a way to "Tell Their Stories Their Way". This process starts with building partnerships, listening, offering platforms and valuing the results. The presenters all work telling these stories of the land from educational to archived digital audio content to mobile storytelling. The session will encourage audience participation in development of these strategic skills.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A06. Climate Advocacy: Yes, You Can! And Here’s How
In an ever-changing and increasingly polarized political landscape, land trusts are the sleeping giants of climate policy. Because of their nationwide footprint and non-adversarial approach, they are uniquely positioned to communicate and advocate for climate change solutions with policymakers at all levels of government. Land trusts bring credibility and research-based solutions. And more importantly, land trusts can demonstrate the local consequences of climate change and make them tangible for policymakers who may be climate change skeptics. But what cost-conscious climate communication and advocacy strategies are available for land trusts to employ? Which are most effective, both with diverse audiences and key policymakers? And what are the legal compliance requirements for such communications with legislators – especially during an election year? This session will answer these questions and more by way of example of The Nature Conservancy’s recent “Surround Sound” campaign to support the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Participants will walk away with practical tips and suggestions to advocate for climate change solutions at all levels of government and the ability to spot legal compliance risks.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A07. Regional Conservation Partnership Program: Easements Update
Development of the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) following passage of the 2018 Farm Bill resulted in the establishment of three new NRCS easement programs—RCPP Entity-held Easements, RCPP U.S.-held Easements and RCPP Alternative Funding Arrangements Easements. Within the past year, program policy, minimum deed terms and deed templates have been published and projects have started moving easements through the various steps toward closure. In this session, participants will get a status update on RCPP and learn about the distinct policy and procedural approaches of the three types of RCPP easements. Participants will walk away with an understanding of how the three RCPP easement types differ and which type might work best for their proposed project.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A08. Real Estate Fundamentals: A Primer for New Land Trust Staff and Board Members (CLE)
Land conservation projects are, at their core, sophisticated real estate transactions. This workshop will acquaint participants with basic real estate concepts, legal elements of real estate transactions, and outline the acquisition process from property identification through title searches and related due diligence to closing. Emphasis will be placed on basic legal terminology, possible pitfalls, and practical advice. The topics will include: types of ownership and how interests in property can be held by different people; title searches, title insurance, and problems; liens and encumbrances; surveys and legal descriptions; due diligence and liability; letters of intent, purchase contracts, options, and rights of first refusal; basic information on deeds, conservation easements and other documents; and closing and recording.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
A09. ¿Donde vives? Mapping a path toward equity in conservation engagement
Many tools and datasets exist to strategically inform land conservation and park creation. These tools have a robust suite of datasets that can be used for achieving other goals as well. Historically, equity-based programs often base their recruitment on low resolution data such as zip code, essays, and self-reported socioeconomic information. Now, using the robust set of data in the Trust for Public Land’s (TPL) ParkServe mapping application, participants can be screened using data about their street and neighborhoods to determine those who are most impacted by environmental inequities and for whom participation could prove the critical difference in advancing conservation and climate justice. The Sonoma Land Trust (SLT) is using the TPL’s ParkServe mapping platform to inform community engagement by enhancing outreach, empowering disproportionately impacted communities, and elevating marginalized voices. This session will focus on opportunities presented by advanced mapping datasets to inform equity-based education and community programs. TPL will provide an overview and demonstration of the equity metrics included in the ParkServe database. SLT will demonstrate how they’ve used this tool to better inform outreach, community engagement, and program participant selection. The session will end with a live testimonial by a youth program participant via Zoom and a short workshop with attendees using the application to explore how equity metrics could inform their practices in their own city. At the end of the workshop, attendees will be encouraged to share their learnings via the conference app or Twitter.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A10. Weaving Cross-Cultural Perspectives to Redefine Conservation
How can the stories of our connection to place help us bridge gaps? How can land provide us a canvas for healing and justice? How can we rebuild and redefine the conservation space to be more relationship based and less transactional? The Montezuma Land Conservancy (MLC) has been expanding innovative community conservation programs in Southwest Colorado and deepening its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion for the past four years. Recently this work has grown into a budding relationship with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe with the hiring of our first ever Cross-Cultural Programs Manager, Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk. This process has connected MLC to community members, elders, and tribal departments to focus reconciliation and trust building through cross-cultural program development and exploration of our shared connections to land. During this session we’ll share how these lessons have helped to influence MLC’s leadership, culture, and conservation planning and how we believe these lessons can be applied to your organization. We hope you’ll join us for this interactive session to challenge ourselves to think differently about how we define conservation. Together we will think of conservation in new ways, weave Indigenous perspectives throughout our work, and discuss how our organizations can act through a lens of relationship and reciprocity to each other and place.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A11. Building Blocks for Creating an Inclusive Conservation Project: Black River, SC Case Study
The Black River, long considered a priceless ecological and cultural resource to the state of South Carolina, has emerged as a critically important asset for advancing economic progress, flood resilience, and community health in one of the most neglected regions of the state. The navigable portions of the Black River, stretching 125 miles exclusively within SC, is one of the most beautiful and under-utilized rivers in the state with the potential to offer residents and visitors a wilderness-quality experience along a coastal-plain river. This community-led vision encompasses a network of Parks stretching 70 miles along the Black River. The water trail and park network will create a unique experience for visitors and a unparalleled economic opportunity for the region. The wholistic conservation initiative along the Black River has obvious habitat connectivity, recreation and economic development opportunities. However, the secondary benefits for human resilience, including drinking water security and flood mitigation, are equally profound and important.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A12. Inside Out: Designing Inclusive Cultures That Invite Diversity
This workshop will introduce participants to the foundations of designing inclusive organizations from the inside out. Participants will explore the key concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and identify the characteristics of inclusive organizations. Using case studies and dialogue, this session will introduce participants to strategies and tools that create and sustain an internal culture of inclusion. We will outline the leverage points for inclusive organizational design, including board and staff development, organizational policies, systems, and processes. Participants will be invited to activate what they’ve learned in this session by outlining at least five action items to bring these concepts to life inside their home organizations.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A13. Park Finance Equity: Ballot Measures That Fund Park-Underserved Communities
In cities across America, too many neighborhoods struggle with undue concentrations of stagnation, disinvestment, and poverty. Past decisions have led to disparities in community opportunities. Climate change also hits hardest in these same low-income areas and communities of color, the neighborhoods that are least equipped to respond. Land trusts need to help ensure that new investments in parks and climate benefit everyone -- especially the people and families most in need and most affected. Most funding for parks is generated through voter-approved measures at the state and local level. Since 1988, voters in cities, counties, and states have approved over 2,100 ballot measures, creating $83 billion in new funding for parks and conservation. In 2020, Denver voters approved Measure 2A, a quarter-cent sales tax that will provide $800 million to fund a wide range of climate initiatives. 2A is one of the first significant climate funding actions taken by a major American city and is an important blueprint for other local governments across the country. Land trusts have been involved in many of these successful ballot measures, developing their advocacy chops and, in some cases, truly transforming their organizations. This workshop provides land trusts with the tools needed to lead or support ballot measures. Learn from one community that has successfully taken their case to the voters to create new funding for historically park under-served neighborhoods and climate.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A14. If We Can Do It, You Certainly Can! Get the Skinny on Fat Gifts
Do you prefer to sit at your desk crafting conservation plans, managing programs, and writing grants, or would you rather go for a walk, go skiing or even flyfishing? That’s major donor fundraising in a nutshell. In this seminar, two living and breathing executive directors will explain how a good major donor gift program will empower your conservation goals and allow you to sleep better at night (and get out from behind your computer). We’ll provide tales of fundraising tragedy and triumph. Plus we’re funny.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A15. Forests in Cities: Conservation Strategies for Climate and Equity
In this session, participants will be introduced to the 1.7 million acres of natural forested land embedded within U.S. cities. These forest patches are unique spaces in cities and provide a raft of benefits to urban residents, such as carbon sequestration and storage, stormwater capture, and air purification to provide a place that enhances mental health and social cohesion. But despite their prevalence in cities and importance, these forests are often underfunded and lack consistent management. This session will create an opportunity for conservation professionals to share knowledge and experiences across the urban-rural landscape. The session will include an exploration of land use change patterns in cities highlighting case studies of natural areas loss, and successful conservation strategies. It will also explore various fundraising and financing tactics, including several innovative funding approaches. The session will also introduce attendees to two novel management resources: an online resource library for urban forest management and an urban silviculture guide, highlighting how rural forestry practices can be applied in urban forest patches.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
A16. Building Strategic Bird Conservation Partnerships with Private Land Networks
In the U.S., over 80% of eastern forests and grasslands as well as 80% of lands in New England are privately held, necessitating innovative partnerships between conservationists and private landowners to conserve biodiversity. The Cornell Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative builds Conservation Collaboratives, which are strategic and coordinated partnerships that bring neighboring land trusts and partners together to focus conservation efforts on private lands where protection and management are most needed and effective by using birds as indicators of healthy habitats. One such collaborative in New England, the Northeast Bird Habitat Conservation Initiative (NBHCI), includes Regional Conservation Partnerships (RCP), which are 54 networks of private and public organizations, including land trusts, who work together to develop and implement shared, long-term conservation visions across regional boundaries. NBHCI partners meet their shared RCP and land trust objectives and ecological priorities by identifying and connecting with landowners, helping to scale efforts for at-risk birds and their associated habitats throughout the Northeast. This workshop will demonstrate how this collaborative model successfully uses eBird to assist with community engagement, stewardship, and land prioritization efforts, employs forestry practices that utilize birds as ambassadors for sustainable forest management and increased climate adaptation, and implements restorative grassland practices with management changes that balance needs of both birds and farmers. We will show how partnerships developed within such a framework as the RCP Network can lead to more collective climate resiliency across a larger landscape through these land prioritization, healthy forest, and sustainable grassland practices.
A16_2022NewOrleansLandConservationConferenceWorkshop_Barker_Handout_Final13
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B01. Unleashing a Fully Funded Land and Water Conservation Fund for Climate and Equity
This session builds on the success of land trusts’ advocacy for full permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to show how this critical program can be used to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and persistent disparities in access to nature for underserved communities. We will present an update on implementation of full permanent funding since passage of the Great American Outdoors Act in 2020, the importance of LWCF to the Biden Administration’s America the Beautiful initiative, and examples of how LWCF advances climate and equity goals. The America the Beautiful initiative recognizes what we in the conservation community have long known: land is our greatest asset in the fight against climate change. We will present models for success using the LWCF toolbox to keep forests as forests for carbon sequestration and water storage/quality, create connected landscapes to preserve biodiversity, and protect floodplains and coastal buffers to increase resilience using both public and private land
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B02. Achieving Flood Protection Through Conservation and Community Partnerships
A resilient community is defined as one where people are meaningfully engaged and empowered to respond to climate-related disasters by rebuilding or adapting in ways that make them stronger and prepared for future challenges. Conservation organizations including Open Space Institute (OSI), Conservation Trust for North Carolina (CTNC), and The Land Conservancy of New Jersey (TLC-NJ) are partnering with communities dealing with the effects of increased rainfall and flooding to develop place-based solutions for climate resilience. These partnerships demonstrate the power of land conservation to mitigate flooding and equip communities with the tools to harness nature for community benefit when rebuilding and protecting against climate-related disasters. During the session, OSI, TLC-NJ, and CTNC will be joined by elected leaders from the Town of Princeville in Eastern N.C. to share case studies and participate in a panel discussion to demonstrate how land trusts can support their own local communities toward addressing the impacts we are all seeing from climate change. The panel will be moderated by the Open Space Institute, which funds planning grants to support climate and community resilience across the East.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B03. Getting Your Stewardship House In Order: Records and Documentation
This workshop will provide an overview of stewardship recordkeeping, and the importance of documenting the various aspects of monitoring visits, easement violations, approvals, denials, and easement interpretations. We will cover general stewardship recordkeeping tips from two different accredited land trusts, as well as best practices and legal considerations for documenting stewardship decisions and activities, especially in light of climate change and water constraints. This includes how to document compliance with various conservation easement provisions, the potential impact on conservation values of requests for easement changes, and the analysis on how the request does not result in impermissible private benefit or private inurement. The session will also touch on how to use monitoring reports, current condition reports, and supplemental baselines to document the completion of an approved activity. Hear about real-life examples from both land trusts and the practical and legal aspects of stewardship documentation.
B03 Handout 1 - Projects Naming Convention
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B04. Keeping Current: Implementing a Successful BDR Photo Point Update Program
With the increase of available geospatial technologies, land trusts continue to have the opportunity to enhance their stewardship toolkits and efforts. In this session, we will share practical tips to help you implement a successful geospatial photo collection program in connection with conservation easement monitoring. We will cover how to identify your needs, how to use ESRI's Field Maps software, how to implement the use of technology to document photo points, and lessons learned. As part of the workshop, we will walk through several example BDR photo point collection case studies.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B05. The External Work: Bilingual Interpretive Signs
Interpretive signs are a missing steppingstone in the efforts to involve the Hispanic/Latinx community in conservation efforts and involve the community in our missions. This case study workshop will include the original plan, the budget, deviations from the original plan, but most importantly why bilingual interpretive signs are important. Including, how to identify if a language barrier exists on your public lands. This bilingual sign project included four different roles from start to finish. These roles come into play at different stages of the project, and it is critical that each person has a clear role and timeline. I will be transparent about our lessons learned and provide solutions for the steps that we would have performed differently.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B06. Overcoming Barriers to Land Access for New American Farmers and Farmers of Color
We all depend on farmland, but people of color who want to farm face barriers to owning the land they need to grow food. In 2016, Groundswell Conservancy broadened its traditional farmland protection work to serve farmers of color and new American farmers. Groundswell has taken a grassroot approach to serving the farmers. By listening to them, Groundswell found pathways to knock down barriers and create opportunities for them to grow food for sale and subsistence, and to participate in land-based healing and educational programming. We have done so by sharing our power and privileges as a White-led and White dominated organization.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B07. Launching a Soil Health Conservation Easement Program
In 2021 Whiterock Conservancy launched the nation's first-ever soil health conservation easement program. This one-of-a-kind program is focused on preserving an often overlooked natural resource, soil. Soil has been degrading and eroding across the nation at an alarming rate. Soil health conservation easements provide a vehicle for private landowners to take action on climate change while still working the lands they love. Join us to learn more about creating the nation's first soil health conservation easement program and how your land trust can replicate Whiterock Conservancy's soil health conservation easement program.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B08. Make My Day: Climate Change and Amending Conservation Easements (CLE)
At the moment there seems to be no clear guidance on whether or how to draft rules in a conservation easement, including in particular an amendment provision, that are certainly going to be necessary for some properties at some point in the future, that will (1) protect the conservation values in perpetuity, (2) address very real land use and reserved-rights issues created by climate change or other natural changes to the landscape (see pdf attached to this proposal), and (3) will potentially withstand an IRS challenge to deductibility of the conservation easement solely or in part because of such provision or provisions. We will discuss the issues and offer (and invite) suggestions.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
B09. Guidelines for Disability Inclusion and Engaging Community Programs
During this session, we will cover the barriers and facilitators to including people with disability in your programs by defining disability inclusion, reviewing the guidelines for inclusion in physical activity and nutrition programs, and discussing how to build an inclusive community program that utilizes local schools, cities and parks.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B10. Activating Allyship: Strategies for Human-Centered Conservation
This workshop will explore the unique ways that conservation can be a leverage point for inclusion in all communities. Participants will expand and reframe ideas about diversity, explore the foundational key concepts and values of allyship, and learn how to engage a human-centered, equity-focused lens in conservation. We will explore the individual and organizational behaviors and actions that inadvertently recreate or reinforce inequity and exclusion, and learn ways to identify and turn those into behaviors that promote and support inclusion. Participants will hear how Keep It Colorado leadership is infusing an equity approach in the conservation community in Colorado, and explore ways to activate these same strategies in their own conservation groups, organizations, and communities.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B11. The Critical Link to Achieving Your Goals is Succession Planning
Perhaps you have heard the expression that people are our best assets. At the same time, conservation organizations (among all organizations) are struggling to keep their talent inspired, and to retain institutional knowledge and specific expertise. Succession planning is the process of identifying the important roles at your organization and creating a plan for how you can support individuals to assume those roles. Land Trust staff often arrive at an organization with passion for the mission and the work they are doing. But for these employees to commit to working at your organization for many years, they must feel that they can continually build their individual skills and talents and be at a workplace that allows them to thrive.In this workshop we will provide participants with ideas on how to create organizational standards, define the core competencies of leadership, and put a leadership development process in place. We will discuss how to create a succession plan that ties into your strategic planning and action planning process. We will talk about the role of the individual who is likely to grow into a critical role at your organization and we’ll discuss the role of supervisors and the board in the process. We will share some examples of best practices for small and large organizations that will help to illustrate how you can take concrete steps to create a more sustainable future for your land trust, with leaders who are in it for the long term.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B12. Put Your Best Foot Forward: Tips and Tools for Understanding the Requirements and Preparing Your Strongest Accreditation Application
Be prepared! Actively using Land Trust Standards and Practices and the accreditation requirements in your daily practice, you will feel ready to prepare your best accreditation application. Learn from Commission staff about how they review your application and gain insights into the accreditation requirements and documentation. As a participant you will leave knowing timesaving short-cuts, how to pre-screen your documents to avoid common problems, how to leverage the Requirements Manual, and more. Appropriate for land trust staff and board members with an interest in first-time or renewal of accreditation that have some familiarity with the land trust accreditation process.
Session B12 Accreditation Requirements
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B13. Strategic Marketing: Refresh, Reconnect, and Grow Members, Donors and Supporters
Maintaining and growing relationships with members, donors, supporters, and the community can be a challenge. You’re not alone if you have had to set aside long-standing strategies and test out lots of new methods and ideas to stay connected in recent years.Use all that you’ve learned about what works (and what doesn’t) to create a powerful, effective marketing plan to help your land trust grow membership, participation, and support. This session uses the process of creating a strategic marketing plan to integrate your lessons learned with the best practices of marketing and outreach – resulting in a plan, messages, and strategies that reach, connect with, and engage audiences and reach your goals. Whether your land trust wants to reconnect with long-time supporters, reach a younger, more diverse audience, or attract more members, this workshop provides the steps, tools, and templates you need to get started. And we’ll highlight land trust staff and examples to inspire and talk through the real work of refreshing and
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B14. No One Likes Dead Fish: Protecting Watersheds in a Changing Climate
Three land trusts in the Philadelphia region address water quality in the Delaware River watershed through very different methods. As climate change threatens to make the Philadelphia area hotter and wetter, its effects, specifically flooding, erosion, sedimentation, loss of wildlife habitat, and nutrient pollution, must be addressed regionally, locally, and on individual properties. Willistown Conservation Trust’s (WCT’s) Watershed Protection Program has worked since 2017 to ensure long-term health of their local watershed through monitoring, restoration, education, and best management practices in small headwater streams. The program seeks to understand the health of the watershed and provide scientifically supported restoration recommendations for municipalities and residents. Wissahickon Trails improves the 64-square mile Wissahickon Creek watershed for the benefit of wildlife, the protection of local drinking water, and to ensure opportunities for the public to connect to nature exist into the future. Their work and methods include land preservation, active habitat management and restoration, and partnerships with neighbors, activists, and local governments. Natural Lands acts as a consultant to municipalities, advising them on how to steward their land and water for improved water quality. Their work for East Goshen Township serves as a case study for how simple open space design can improve water quality, create habitat, beautify a place and make open space more inviting to the surrounding community.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
B15. Restoring Land to Improve Water Quality: Strategic Targeting and Project Implementation
Land trusts play a critical role in protecting, restoring and stewarding water quality, and most identify water quality as a key driver for their conservation efforts. These goals align with public priorities; polling conducted by The Nature Conservancy suggests that voters prioritize water as a critical reason to engage in conservation, with 87% reporting it as very important to protect our drinking water quality. This session will review several case studies of large-scale habitat restoration projects completed by the Black Swamp Conservancy in the western Lake Erie Basin. These projects are driven by water quality improvements, but also provide critical benefits to wildlife and expand opportunities for public recreation and education. The session will discuss targeting of land for restoration purposes, including the development of a GIS model funded by Land Trust Alliance’s Great Lakes Water Quality Pilot Project. Finally, this session will discuss the unique challenges related to funding and managing these projects for land trusts thinking about undertaking large-scale restoration projects.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C01. Land Trusts Leading: Climate-Smart Forestry in Practice
Land trusts and allied organizations are well-positioned to serve as leaders in demonstrating and promoting what truly sustainable forest management looks like in an era of climate change. Addressing the full scope of ecological and societal needs while achieving maximum climate benefit from our forests is a key issue for land trusts and the land conservation community as a whole. The New England Forestry Foundation’s Exemplary Forestry standards offer one model that aligns well with the core mission of conservation-oriented organizations by integrating forest conservation with climate-smart forest management. In this session, you will hear from a number of voices in the New England land trust community and beyond about their individual and organizational journeys toward embracing a holistic, climate-smart approach to forest stewardship that supports long-term forest health and climate adaptation while also sequestering and storing carbon, at a time when we are losing biodiversity and facing an extinction crisis. This approach includes thoughtfully planned, periodic harvests designed to enhance wildlife habitat, increase forest productivity, and maintain or increase carbon storage. Presenters will share how carbon-aligned forest management aligns with their mission, why they see it as important, and how it has worked for them in practice, as well as thoughts on the state- and national-level policy interventions that can take this management approach to scale for maximum climate benefit. Presenters will also explore the, at times, challenging conversations it has raised within their organization and/or their wider stakeholder networks.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C02. Advancing Solar Energy with Sound Siting
The development of clean, solar energy is an important component of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electric sector. However, solar development can pose conflicts with land preservation efforts when solar projects are targeted to prime farmlands, forests and other sensitive lands that are priorities for conservation, restoration and improved management. In addition, a new category of so-called "dual-use" projects seek to combine solar development and agriculture in compatible ways, increasingly known as "agrovoltaics". Land trusts should understand how solar development may impact their work and how they can engage to shape sound policies and projects that support solar development in appropriate locations and minimize conflicts with preservation goals. We can have clean energy AND healthy farms and forests. This is not an either-or choice. When utility-scale solar projects are properly sited, our climate wins.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C03. To Do List for Sustainable, Perpetual Land Conservation (CLE)
Over the last two decades of the half-century-old field of land conservation law, the conservation community has instituted crucial supportive mechanisms and implemented new infrastructure to stabilize the perpetuity-long duration of conservation easements and their holders. After a half-century of incredibly successful conservation work, is essential now to evaluate the practical, policy, and ethical impacts of our work to focus on urgent needs and obtainable outcomes in the short-term, and sea-changing, aspirational goals for the long-term. From bolstering and expanding conservation incentives in the face of extensive abuse, to integrating private land protection within communities, shifting land monetization and valuation approaches, unbundling notions of land ownership, and re-democratizing and restoring land access and use, presenters will share a conservation checklist intended to sustain and secure perpetual land conservation as a continuing dynamic and flexible source for local, state, federal, and global protection and management of critical resources, while ensuring equitable, inclusive, diverse, and just land conservation for the future.
C03 slides_LTARally2022AToDoListforSustainablePerpetualConservation
C03_ArticleOPPORTUNITIES FOR REFORM AND REIMAGINING IN CONSERVATION AND LAND USE LAW A TO-DO LIST
C03_LTARally2022AToDoListforSustainablePerpetualConservationOutline
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
C04. Gaining Ground: Engaging the “Conservation Concerned”
In its current strategic plan, the Land Trust Alliance committed to designing and launching a coalition-based “Relevance Campaign.” The Alliance conducted market research studies that identified an audience of 33 million adult Americans who, like land trust current supporters, care about conservation and are committed to taking action. These “conservation concerned” individuals are young, diverse and have not yet engaged with the land trust community. In partnership with 14 land trusts, the Alliance developed and tested messaging to engage “conservation concerned” audiences, and, in April of this year, launched a pilot phase of the Gaining Ground campaign. In this session, participants will gain insights into what messages and tactics were effective as well as tips on how to participate in the ongoing campaign to broaden their base of support by incorporating the campaign messaging and other materials, including social graphics and digital advertising tactics, templates and videos, into their own communications and outreach.
C04_Gaining Ground_Engaging the Conservation Concerned_with additional research data
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C05. The Oregon I Am: How Oregon Land Trusts Built an Innovative and Inclusive Communication Campaign
One of our goals as communicators is to connect more people, in more places, to the work of land trusts. In Oregon, we set out to do just that through the Oregon I Am campaign, a multi-pronged initiative that featured an illustrated map, a brand new card game, a beer collaboration, and more. Join us for this in-depth session to learn how the Coalition of Oregon Land Trust built an inclusive, collaborative, and unconventional communications campaign that engaged younger and more diverse audiences.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C06. Regenerative Grazing Leases
This workshop explores the growing evidence that careful adaptive (regenerative) management of grazing animals on natural and working lands can often improve ecological health and resilience and create valuable economic and social co-benefits. Participants will learn about the principles of regenerative management, diverse examples of its successful application across North America, and how to write regenerative grazing leases using the newly released publication by California FarmLink and TomKat Ranch Guide to Regenerative Grazing Leases: Opportunities for Resilience.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C07. Knowing When to Say No!: Considering Climate, Equity and Mission in Project Selection Criteria
When is the last time you looked at the criteria you use to select your organization’s prospective conservation projects? If it’s been a few years, it may be time to revisit your conservation priorities to incorporate equity and climate. Join us as we explore how to incorporate climate, mission, and equity values when creating (or revising) project selection criteria for current and new projects. This session includes discussion where participants fill the role of lands committee members tasked with providing guidance for a “green light” or hard “no” on complex acquisition projects. This interactive session will sharpen your focus on key parts of the acquisition process that may have significant implications on the permanence of your conservation work and your land trust’s relations with its community.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C08. Leaning Into Donations with Reserved Life Estate
Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation has been utilizing Donations with Reserved Life Estate to increase impact in conservation and provide immediate benefits to their donors. INHF land projects and development staff will share their experience of what it takes to make RLEs an effective tool, including case studies of specific scenarios involving natural land, agricultural land, and land that includes infrastructure. What are the legal implications? Why would a donor want to make a donation with reserved life estate? What are the risks and what are the rewards for INHF to accept such a donation? When would we say “no”? And once the deal is done, what’s needed to maintain a positive and potentially long-term relationship?
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C09. Partnerships to Provide Equitable access to the Outdoors
Building community partnerships that support common goals, leverage resources and create better outcomes is a priority for most organizations and agencies. Integrating wellness, science, agricultural career pathways, social equity, and engaging content digital content provides a unique opportunity to equip our students and community members with a relevant and meaningful connection and appreciation for stewardship of the environment, while providing valuable real-world experiences. Some partnerships continue to grow and develop over time until the sky is the limit. Others putter out and fail. Learn why it’s worth exploring partnerships to achieve equitable outdoor access in your region, how to get started, how to evaluate your success and see some examples for how this has been done in Solano County, California.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C10. Turn the Tide: How Land Trusts Can Serve African American Farmers
Over the last 100 years, the number of African American farm-operators has plummeted from nearly 1,000,000 to a little over 45,000 today, now making up only 1.3 percent of producers, according to USDA Census of Agriculture. This decline is no accident but a result of years of discrimination and unequal opportunities. While the problem is huge, land trusts can play an important part in changing this dynamic. Join Ebonie Alexander, Black Family Land Trust, and Mary Burke, Land Trust Alliance, as they discuss how we got to this point and the current challenges facing African American farmers Participants will also have the opportunity of hearing first-hand from Joe Thompson, a former tobacco farmer and one of the only FRPP easements in the programs history. Filled with real-life stories and practical tips, this workshop is a must for land trusts who want to help families keep their land. This workshop will cover: --What land trusts need to know when reaching out to the African American farming community, including simple strategies to build trust --The nuts and bolts of Heirs’ Property, including why it is a problem and how Maryland passed the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act (UPHPA) --What small acreage landowners can do to keep their land assets as performing assets.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C11. Land Back and Land Trusts
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C12. A Picture Paints a Thousand Words: Five Visual Frameworks for Strong Land Trusts
People get stuck thinking about how to build their organization. What should be simple is often very difficult. This session intends to help people understand the fundamental elements of successful land trusts by looking at several specific icons – circles, triangles, and arrows – that offer clarity as they help define the systems and structure of land trusts. Using icons that have been developed and refined over three decades of work with land trusts, the session will explore six core issues that many land trusts face: leadership development, lines of authority, delegation, strategic planning, and board-engaged fundraising.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C13. Get Ready for your Renewal of Accreditation
Knowledge is power! Bring your curiosity and your questions to this introduction of the accreditation renewal process. Participants will receive an overview of the renewal process and timing, how to get help and information throughout the process, and how and when to start preparing for your renewal application. (Hint: it’s never too early!) Participants will leave confident about preparing, organizing, and uploading application documents for review. Appropriate for accredited land trust staff and board members unfamiliar with the accreditation renewal process.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C14. No Land Trust is Too Small to Conserve Wildlife with Federal Partners!
This workshop will demonstrate how land trusts of any size can access federal funds to conserve wildlife. With two-thirds of land in the Lower 48 under private ownership, many imperiled species depend on private land. As stewards of 56 million acres of private land, land trusts are well-positioned to be leaders in stemming the biodiversity crisis. Defenders of Wildlife will demonstrate a key that matches federal programs with goals that a land trust may have to address their unique wildlife conservation needs. The US Fish and Wildlife Service will describe how land trusts of any size can engage with the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, Coastal Program, and National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grants Program. The Woodlands Conservancy in Louisiana will provide a case study of a land trust with only two full-time staff who secured funds from several federal programs, such as the USDA Conservation Stewardship Program, for habitat enhancement. The Land Trust for Louisiana will provide a case study of a land trust with only two full-time staff who, in partnership with The Conservation Fund, will implement Louisiana's first Agricultural Land Easement through USDA's Agricultural Conservation Easement Program to conserve a large rice farm for bird species of conservation concern. After this workshop, participants should be able to:
- Identify opportunities for land trusts and federal agencies to partner in wildlife conservation
- Understand the basics of developing competitive applications for federal funds
- Understand how land trusts with small staffs can navigate federal requirements and processes for meaningful partnerships.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C15. New Resources & Local Perspectives to Help You Dive into Water Work
The worlds of land conservation and watershed protection often function parallel to one another despite their many areas of overlap. To bridge this gap, LTA and EPA have released two guides to aid land trusts in increasing their involvement in water quality work. In this session, we will provide an overview of these newly released resources, covering a range of topics useful in more effectively communicating water connections, including key watershed components, the Watershed Approach, Clean Water Act programs/funding sources related to land conservation/stewardship, and watershed protection strategies pertaining to building partnerships, strategic land conservation/stewardship, and community outreach techniques. To exemplify this type of work at the local level, Alachua Conservation Trust of Florida will present on its “springsheds” outreach strategy to protect the Santa Fe River Basin, which contains diverse forests, wetlands, wildlife, and working lands that are the base of local tourism and the state’s economy but are under threat from development, groundwater pumping, and nitrogen pollution. Lastly, Groundwork will discuss its community driven, designed, led, and implemented largescale green infrastructure projects aimed at improving the quality of life in New Orleans and at contributing to a healthier watershed that includes surrounding wetlands and Gulf of Mexico estuaries. Overall, we hope to encourage participants to utilize our guides and to take inspiration from the strategic, personable watershed protection/communication work being done in these East Coast settings. This session will also inform S&P1 (Ethics, Mission, Community Engagement) and S&P8 (Evaluating & Selecting Conservation Projects).
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
C16. Trail Planning & Management for Land Trusts
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D01. Land Trusts & Goldilocks: Find the Carbon Pathway That’s Just Right!
This session will provide an overview of the compliance and voluntary carbon markets and the differences in carbon programs within each. This will include the opportunity for attendees to rotate through stations hosted by Forest Carbon Works staff and partners to allow for personalized and in-depth content and dialogue. Attendees will leave the workshop with an understanding of the difference between these two markets, key considerations when choosing a carbon program, how carbon financing can be used as a tool that aligns with current management objectives. Hear how carbon financing is being used for two diverse groups in accomplishing their strategic climate and cultural goals including partner-sharing of their own experiences in working through the process of carbon project development with Forest Carbon Works. Attendees will also leave with a well-versed understanding in not only improved forest management carbon projects for small landowners and how these opportunities may align with their own communities and partners, but also reforestation carbon projects and how these can be layered to maximize carbon project potential and financing.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D02. Joining Forces with the Military to Combat Climate Change Threats
In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) suffered installation-wide devastation after winds from Hurricane Michael, a powerful Category 5 storm, destroyed almost 500 buildings. As part of their recovery, Tyndall AFB is working with local, state, and national partners to create an “Installation of the Future” that is resilient to changing climate conditions. These partners are leveraging funding from the Readiness and Environmental Protection (REPI) program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s National Coastal Resilience Fund to construct living shorelines and oyster reef habitats adjacent to the base to preserve water quality, enhance overall ecosystem health, and strengthen flood resilience. The outcomes from this project will also support ongoing efforts in the newly designated Northwest Florida Sentinel Landscape. Partners in this landscape are already identifying innovative solutions and opportunities to increase climate adaptation, restore habitat for threatened and endangered species, and improve water quality and quantity across high priority areas for the Department of Defense, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Come to the REPI program’s session to learn more about how partners in Florida are joining forces with the military to reduce climate change risks.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D03. Smart Solar: Advancing Best Practices for Clean Energy Planning and Resource Protection
According to the latest IPCC report, human induced climate change poses grave and accelerating threats to ecosystems, biodiversity and society. In response to climate policy and advances in technology, the US is embarking on a transformative shift toward renewable energy generation. A challenge for land trusts is that renewable energy, notably utility scale solar, is land intensive and often sited on prime agricultural lands, grassland habitat and forests. Projects planned, sited, and developed in ways that amplify benefits to community, conservation, and climate interests are more likely to avoid project delays, increased costs, and risk of cancellation while supporting a sustainable and equitable clean energy transition. In a presentation + discussion format, this workshop will feature perspectives from three experts in renewable energy and land conservation. We will share new tools and strategies that land trust can use to effectively engage constituents, policy makers, landowners, project developers, and other stakeholders interested in large scale renewable energy project planning. Our session will touch on wind energy but focus primarily on utility scale solar. (According to the Biden administration's Solar Futures Study, 10 million acres of rural land will be needed for solar to meet aggressive decarbonization goals over the next 25 years.) This workshop will feature the latest renewable energy mapping analyses from The Nature Conservancy and American Farmland Trust, as well as ecosystem-friendly and restorative design best practices developed by the Great Plains Institute. The workshop will cover emerging best practices and tools to enhance project co-benefits (including wildlife habitat and stormwater management) and strategies to make solar more compatible with agriculture and farmland protection, a key focus for many land trusts.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D04. Modern Baselines: What Hath Experience Wrought?
Times have changed and our baselines need to change with them. This advanced session will discuss, debate, and share best practices for land trusts facing a range of new challenges. These include anticipating a changing climate, documenting reserved and exercised rights, how and when to update old baseline reports and ensuring that each of these approaches satisfies requirements for admissibility and enforcement. We will lead an interactive, guided discussion to elicit challenges and solutions that senior staff have encountered across a range of easements, restrictions, physical contexts, and relationships. Participants will leave with concrete advice about how to both draft the strongest possible baseline reports and determine when updated reports are needed.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D05. Leveraging the Power of Story to Secure Funding and Drive Participation
The world and climate we work in are changing rapidly. It's important that your land trust story keeps up with the changing times and reality we are facing. This is especially true if you are interested in widening and diversifying your audience and base of participation and support. Effectively rebranding and updating your land trust story requires a firm grasp of the editorial process. In this workshop session we will investigate powerful storytelling techniques you can leverage to help you craft effective appeals, win grant funding, and communicate your mission, values, and programming successes to your base and other diverse audiences.
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Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D06. Holistic approach to Water Quality Improvement and Landscape-scale Conservation
Learn about landscape-scale efforts to conserve farmland, improve water quality, and enhance public access through the development of new partnerships, use of innovative funding, and by embracing both conservation and land-use planning strategies from two organizations operating in the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The session will describe how the Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley and The Piedmont Environmental Council were able to build staff and partner capacity and accelerate conservation outcomes with water as the through line for all of their work. Regardless of organizational size or area of focus, this session will inspire relentless incrementalism for a watershed-wide, large landscape partnership approach to conservation.
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Holistic approach to water quality improvements and landscape-scale conservation
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D07. ACEP 101 and Program Updates
Is your land trust new to utilizing the ACEP-ALE Program? Do you have questions about how the program can help your land trust conserve working lands in perpetuity? Join NRCS Easement Program Division team members for ACEP 101 + Program Updates. During the session, you'll learn how ACEP-ALE can work for your land trust, tips for navigating the application process, and have an opportunity to connect with fellow practitioners and NRCS staff and hear first-hand experiences with the program.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D08. Red Flags, Red Lines and Red Ink! The Difference Between, Good, Bad and Simply Awful Appraisals (CLE)
The Senate Finance Committee issued a report in 2020 documenting the abuses it found in reviews of appraisals supporting syndicated conservation easements. This session will summarize those abuses and present the lessons for land trusts from the recent experience of three JLL appraisers retained by the IRS and the DOJ to review more than 100 syndicated easement appraisals. The session will summarize the critical elements of an appraisal report that must be included to comply with IRS and USPAP requirements and how the National Conservation Easement Data Base can be used by land trust to assure quality appraisals. It will also present a review checklist that can assist land trusts in working through an appraisal review.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
D09. Honoring Tribal Sovereignty and Achieving Climate Change Goals with Traditional Ecological Knowledge
The Native Land Trust Council partners will explain how to work with federally-recognized tribes and native land trusts by bringing representatives to the table and expanding land conservation, protect landscapes, watershed, sacred sites, traditional use areas, and cultural resources through partnerships. NLTC will discuss the application of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge to mitigate climate change (ocean acidification, sea level rise, drought, extreme fire, and wind events, etc.) impacts on their lands
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D10. The Perpetuity Principle & K-12 Leadership Summit: A Three-year National Learning Journey
The Perpetuity Principle has been developed over the past 4 years to help guide promising practices and better programming for the K-12 Land Trust Community of Practice. In this workshop participants will explore how every land trust can have an enduring K-12 Perpetuity Program. In March 2020 we launched the Learning Landscapes K-12 Leadership Summit with 15 land trusts from Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maine, New York, Michigan, Wyoming, Idaho and California. Through the pandemic commitments were made and programs forged. Summits in 2020, 2021, and 2022 were integrated with monthly support sessions to deepen purpose and extend practices. Specific Perpetuity Program Practices include: - Purpose - Perpetuity Atlas: Program Mapping an Enduring Design - Equity, Diversity, Justice, and Inclusion - Collective Evaluation: Logic Model, Theory of Change, and Outcomes & Impacts - Place-based Learning and Stewardship: Climate - Proximity & Frequency: GreenSchoolyards & Near Nature
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D11. Reimagining Land Trusts as Leaders of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice
Western Reserve Land Conservancy is the result of 13 mergers of traditional land trusts that worked in predominantly white, affluent places in Northeast Ohio. In 2008 the organization began a journey to learn how to serve cities and densely urbanized places such as Cleveland, OH. This resulted in the creation of urban programs, and a deep commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice. The mission transformation from exurban to holistic has been incredibly successful. Learn from four leaders how this evolution happened. Lessons learned. Insights gained. Friction encountered and overcome. The racial diversification of our board and staff. How to move from a charitable framework to a reciprocal framework of relationships in urban areas and distressed communities. The session will focus on deep and enduring partnerships with Black-founded and Black-led organizations, Rid All Green Partners and the Khnemu Foundation.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D12. Lawyering Up: Considerations when Selecting and Working with Outside Counsel
Land trusts face myriad issues that require legal advice. Whether drafting conservation easements, preparing board resolutions, reviewing contracts, or defending property boundaries and easement terms, having the support of competent counsel is critical to success. However, most land trusts do not employ in-house counsel and therefore must turn to outside attorneys. This workshop covers when land trusts should consider using outside legal counsel, what experience they should look for in a candidate, and how they should work with selected outside counsel, as well as what expectations attorneys often have for their land trust clients. The panel is composed of both attorneys and land trust board members who will share their experience and expertise in addressing legal needs common among land trusts.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D13. Beyond the Grant Proposal: Collaborating with Funders for Success
A well written proposal, along with clear and concise supporting materials is just one element to receiving grant funding. What is equally important, and less discussed, is the communication with a funder before the proposal is written, as well as the continued relationship during the life an awarded grant. This session outlines the elements of a successful grant application, how to collaborate with a funder, which, along with attention to a few key details, can make the difference between a large grant and a large disappointment. This session will reinforce those things that may seem obvious, that preparation and developing and maintaining relationships with funders leads to long term success. The session will also include an informal and sometimes humorous and insightful look into how a grant application is reviewed and what areas receive the most attention, as well as key aspects of the applicant/funder dynamic. The presenter spent 20 years at land trusts successfully raising funding from foundation and government grants before become a grant maker himself and combines those experiences into sound advice.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D14. Large Landscape Conservation and Collective Fundraising
Keep It Connected is a program of the Heart of the Rockies Initiative. We are a partnership of 27 local, regional, and national land trusts working in five states and two provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Washington) across 315-million acres in the Central Rockies of North America. The single largest impediment to lasting conservation of the region’s wildlife connectivity is access to capital funds. Based on the best science available, Keep it Connected showcases the region’s most important private lands for wildlife connectivity that are ready to conserve now. The projects in this portfolio are mature, seeking capstone funding to be completed, and help private foundations and philanthropists easily sort through and identify the most critical, ready to protect, private lands that fit their values and mission. Keep It Connected helps land trusts respond to the growing demand of landowners seeking tools to retain the agricultural, wildlife, and open space values of their land, with a particular focus on lands that contribute to sustaining wildlife connectivity. Our secure, searchable portfolio highlights one active project from each of the 27 land trusts in our network. It is designed to find the funding necessary to move each project to completion and bring the next project waiting in the wings into the spotlight, therefore increasing the pace of conservation. We seek to share the lessons learned to date with our colleagues who might be thinking about ambitious collective projects to respond to the ongoing biodiversity and climate crisis.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
D15. How Communities Restored a Watershed and Impacted Science and Policy
This session will review a five-year effort which culminated in the first entire watershed in Maine to have fish passage fully restored to Atlantic river herring and other anadromous fish species. They will talk about how this non-traditional land trust work was done leveraging non-traditional partnerships. This presentation will showcase who was involved, images of the construction and projects, efforts in working so closely with small coastal communities and local governments, and discussion about long-term impacts on fisheries management policy from local to national, and what this means for future and ongoing research, restoration and management efforts.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E01. Incentivizing Managed Retreat from Sea Level Rise Through Conservation Partnerships
This presentation will focus on successful partnerships between land conservation organizations and local governments working to complete property acquisitions in flood risk areas, particularly areas of sea level rise inundation. This work is modeled off the concept of a Shoreline Adaptation Land Trust, developed by John Englander. The session will include presentations from two states, Virginia and Louisiana. In Virginia, Wetlands Watch is developing a program strategy and community of practice that will help local governments overcome barriers to complete property acquisitions in flood risk areas. Most localities, particularly those located in coastal Virginia, where the impacts of sea level rise are acutely felt, do not have active acquisition programs. While there are many reasons why buyouts are not pursued in communities, such as lack of political will, capacity constraints, and grant writing inexperience, one barrier is of particular interest and the subject of this presentation. Local government staff do not specialize in land conservation management. As the number of acquired parcels in a community increases commensurate with the increased risk from sea level rise, the land management responsibilities grow exponentially for local government staff. How can localities keep up with the financial and programmatic burden of managing vacant parcels? Wetlands Watch hopes land conservation and other land management organizations can offer one solution to this problem. This presentation will discuss work to date in partnership with an urban land trust, the Living River Trust, on connecting land conservation and management organizations with local governments removing people from flood risk. The presentation will describe the work of a multi-year pilot project with the Cities of Norfolk and Chesapeake that explores the concepts of a Shoreline Adaptation Land Trust. The presentation will detail the creation of a community of practice that connects land trusts with local government hazard mitigation and floodplain management program staff to acquire flood risk properties. In Louisiana, the Louisiana Watershed Initiative and the Louisiana Land Trust are functioning like a Shoreline Adaptation Land Trust. The presentation, given by representatives from the LA Watershed Initiative and the LA Land Trust, will discuss the Statewide Buyouts Program, a voluntary program that provides property buyouts in flood-prone areas, as part of the Louisiana Watershed Initiative’s efforts to reduce flood risk throughout Louisiana. The buyout program, which is designed to primarily benefit low- to moderate-income residents, offers an incentive—payment above fair market value—to eligible applicants who relocate to areas of lower flood risk. The presentation will review the work that the program has accomplished to date along with highlighting the relationship established between the Louisiana Office of Community Development and the Louisiana Land Trust. The presentation will also review the resettlement of Isle de Jean Charles, home of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E02. A Case Study in Green Infrastructure: Engage Community in Climate Action by Amplifying Youth Voices
When a land trust, a town and a university saw their properties were at risk of erosion, they sought nature-based solutions and landed upon living shorelines. Living shorelines can protect and restore habitats threatened by rising seas and storm events. Learn how land trusts can promote initiatives like these by working with youth to interview stakeholders, create education forums and hold community conversations to garner support for green infrastrucure solutions. With the help of passionate local youth, these organizations collaborated with the local high school, members of their local communities, business leadrs, and government officials to take action. These next-generation changemakers researched how living shorelines effectively protect waterways and shorelines. Using land trust properties, and town-owned land, these young people sought to create a living shoreline as a demonstration project for local landowners and businesses. They interviewed professionals, created education forums, and community conversations to engage the town in action. This demonstration project and impassioned youth started meaninful discussions in the community about what is at risk, and how to take collective action to protect the land we know and love. Leave with details about living shorelines, brainstorm nature-based solutions that would benefit your community, project plans for community roll-out and a guide to hold community conversations to engage your town leaders, and neighbors in climate action. Involving youth in climate adaptation projects is a powerful way to make progress toward climate solutions while giving agency to the younger generation to get involved in their communities and local land trusts.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E03. Partnerships Unlocking Carbon Markets for Land Trusts and Forest Landowners
This session will cover the partnerships currently being piloted between the Family Forest Carbon Program and land trusts. The FFCP is structuring partnerships with land trusts and other organizations to engage with their landowner bases and help them enroll in carbon contracts. Participants will hear learnings from this pilot, learn and provide feedback about how land trusts can help landowners access carbon markets.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E04. Success in Holding Mitigation Bank Conservation Easements
The Land Trust for Louisiana (LTL) currently holds 14 conservation easements (servitudes) with one pending on wetland mitigation banks and mitigation areas in Louisiana that total over 6,000 acres. These projects have generated over $450,000 to cover acquisition, stewardship, and legal defense costs. There are several roles a land trust can play in relation to regulatory mitigation, including easement Holder, Long-term Manager, or Mitigation Sponsor, with the least risky being the Holder. The New Orleans US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and many other districts require third-party conservation easements for all wetland mitigation banks. Having an accredited land trust to hold the easement helps benefit the Mitigation Sponsor and Manager who need someone to play that role to allow the project to happen, and has created an opportunity for LTL. Conservation easements differ somewhat than typical easements. For example, USACE districts typically have their own easement template and are reluctant to vary the language significantly, but LTL has had success in getting minimal language added that was recommended by the LTA. Land trusts must also introduce their USACE districts to the need for a Baseline Documentation Report in addition to the standard Mitigation Banking Instrument. Land trust need skilled staff in negotiating with mitigation consultants representing bank sponsors as well as the USACE, but once acquired, the process is relatively routine. Holding conservation easements for regulatory mitigation projects can come with minimal risk and full funding of easement project costs. In addition, unlike many land trust projects, they become high quality habitats, as the mitigation sponsors and managers are required to fully fund restoration and management in perpetuity.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E05. Storied Landscapes: What Making A Video Can Teach You About Your Land Trust
In November 2021, Bold Bison hopped in a car and traversed the Lone Star State, from Dallas to Houston to Austin to San Antonio to El Paso. Charged with the task of helping seven land trusts better understand how they can tell their organizations’ stories through video, we spent 10 days filming dawn to dusk with these land trusts, capturing just a snippet of their programs. But in this brief moment, we heard incredible stories about the work of land trusts: how a land trust uses its access to real estate to support food justice in communities of color; how a community garden helped a family get back to normal after a years-long battle with cancer; how a preserve became a frontline for the humanitarian border crisis. The stories speak to organizations that are so much more complex and intentional than a buy-protect-sell model for land trusts – and those are perspectives that must capture in our storytelling to connect with new audiences. In this thought-provoking workshop, participants will hear from their Texan counterparts to gain an understanding of how this video production process increased their storytelling capacity; boosted their communications confidence; and bolstered relationships with their partners and landowners. Participants will brainstorm together how they can incorporate these lessons and the key insights of Gaining Ground at their land trust. Participants will leave the session with the energy to invest in communications at their own organization and the excitement to expand their land trust’s storytelling capacity through video.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E06. So Many Options: OPAVS and Other Tools to Keep Protected Farmland in Farming
As land trusts and public Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easement (PACE) programs expand their programing to address farmland access and affordability, more are looking to tools that restrict the resale of protected agricultural land in some way. Come join us in a lively discussion about Options to Purchase at Agricultural Value (also known as Preemptive Purchase Rights) and two new tools being pioneered to keep protected land available for farmers and ranchers. These include Resale Purchase Limits, a new approach being pioneered by the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, and an Affordability Easement Overlay that American Farmland Trust developed for a recent project. We’ll compare the merits of the three approaches and how they have been received by lenders and landowners. We’ll discuss issues around valuation and appraisals and will consider how well these tools are working to keep farmland affordable and in active agricultural use.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E07. The Real Estate Conservation Toolbox: Finding the Right Tool for the Job
A well-stocked toolbox is critical to build trust with landowners and construct successful land conservation projects! This session will introduce newer land protection staff (and experienced staff looking for a refresher on the basics or information on a tool they have not yet used) to available tools for real estate conservation, including fee acquisitions (with discussion of like-kind exchanges, bargain sales, gifts of real estate, landowner reserved rights, and gifts after a donor’s lifetime), as well as conservation easements and other “less-than-fee” tools. You will learn how to decide which tool will best meet the landowner’s and land trust’s conservation goals, while minimizing risk to the land trust. You’ll also learn about the pros and cons of each tool; tips for anticipating changes in land ownership and on the land to ensure the tool you choose provides lasting conservation benefits; which Land Trust Standards and Practices apply to each tool; and then you’ll put your knowledge to the test in a small-group discussion of a “real-life” conservation project.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E08. Practical Pointers on IRS Form 8283 and Gift Letters (CLE)
Correctly completing Form 8283 can make or break a conservation easement deduction and the IRS issued a new version of this form in Dec. 2020. The IRS has fully denied deductions because of improperly completed forms or the lack of required documentation. A contemporaneous written acknowledgement is required to be received by the donor for the donation to be deductible. Knowing what transaction expenses are deductible is also critical, as many are unaware that reimbursing a landowner for such expenses could render the donation a "bargain sale." While donors are legally responsible for substantiating donations, land trusts may assist donors to understand the forms, so long as they don't provide legal advice. The session will also discuss how a donee organization should review a donor's appraisal, what to do if the claimed value is so high as to "shock the conscience," and recent changes to Land Trust Standards and Practices and recent court cases related to Form 8283 and gift letters. This is an abbreviated version of the seminar offered by the presenters and appraiser Mark Weston on Thursday. That session will include hands-on exercises and more detail on federal tax and qualified appraisals; there is no need to attend this session if you attend the seminar.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
E09. Native and Non-Native Relationships: Understanding the Basics
There has been an increase in global awareness around Indigenous People’s stewardship in land and water initiatives, leadership role in climate change and recognition of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge over the past few years. This responsibility has always been given to the Indigenous People since time immemorial, however, many triggering events and the severity of the state of the planet have increased the interest in non-Native communities partnering with Native Communities. Right relationship is key to working with Native Communities and to do so, there must be an understanding of protocols, acknowledgements and a willingness to set things right. This session is an offering to those who want to learn what work needs to be done on an individual and organizational level in order to be able to show up as a good partner to Indigenous Peoples.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E10. Engaging Communities of Faith for More Holistic Conservation
This session has been cancelled.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E11. Think Like a System, Act Like a Network, Lead Like a Movement!
Think. Act. Lead. It seems simple enough. But recognizing the complex systems you are working in, building a dynamic network of partners capable of solving challenging problems, crafting a consensus that points your collaborators in a unified direction, and managing toward a robust and entrepreneurial response is never easy. All of this is harder, but even more necessary, in the deep inter-sector collaborations that are vital to work in the conservation lands field. Yet, we rarely consider the skills needed to create and maintain these partnerships. Most of us learn these skills by trial, error, and many times, failure. Worse, we typically stay in our self-reinforcing silos, sharing perspectives and frustrations with like-minded people, limiting our vision of what land partnerships can become. So, what do leaders need to create sustainable partnerships at the intersection of public, corporate, and nonprofit sectors that solve complex social and economic challenges? We will introduce you to a roadmap of skills, practices, and compelling examples to inspire new possibilities in partnership.
E11_Think Like a System Act Like a Network Lead Like a Movement_print
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E12. Assessing Campaign Readiness
Moving from fundraising basics to a major campaign is a big leap - one that takes keen understanding of what it will take for a campaign to succeed. This session focuses on the pillars of strength needed to support an effective campaign, reflected in 6 Cs - case, constituency, capacity, capability, culture, and climate. Participants will explore these dimensions of fundraising readiness and learn how to assess and improve on them.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E13. Applying Predictive Analytics For More Successful Fundraising Campaigns
Fundraising campaigns in Northern California have been analyzed using predictive analytics models to determine the degree to which past behavior, demographics, charitable giving, wealth profiles, and neighborhood characteristics predict response to direct mail appeals. In this session, the presenters will compare a half dozen different models that predict which past donors will give to a current campaign and models that predict how new prospects will respond. We will discuss practical approaches for targeting direct mail. Campaigns can be made more cost effective by eliminating mail sent to people who are unlikely to respond and by analyzing variables to assess which characteristics most influence response. Interesting patterns were identified such as the proximity curve — how response varies by distance to the land conservation project, and the donor decay curve — the mathematical function that describes how current donors become lapsed donors. The findings can be used by any land trust and have broad implications for data collection, estimation methods, targeting, revenue optimization, and the procurement of lists for future appeals.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E14. Stewarding Vacant Land – New Resources for Land Trusts in Metro Areas (RM)
As the land conservation movement looks to expand its impact and reflects on its approach to equity, some land trusts have already ventured into new spaces, namely supporting the stewardship of vacant lots in neighborhoods and cities. In this session, Heartlands Conservancy will share their entrance into and approach to working on vacant land. They’ll discuss their philosophy, partners and projects. Additionally, the Center for Community Progress, the leading national nonprofit on vacancy and abandonment, will give a primer to understanding systemic vacancy, what roles land trusts/conservancies can play, and cover how to use their Vacant Land Stewardship Online Resource Center to begin your vacant land stewardship journey. This session will have two presentations, a group activity and plenty of time for questions and answers.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
E15. Land Trusts, Landscape Connectivity and Wildlife Highway Projects
As environmental conditions shift in response to climate change and development, connected landscapes that allow wildlife to move between protected places are increasingly important. Additionally, hundreds of millions of animals are killed on roadways each year, including amphibians, birds, mammals, and other vertebrate species. Infrastructure like underpasses or overpasses can safely guide wildlife over and under roadways. However, such projects are only effective–and often only possible–if land on either side of the crossing project is protected. Land trusts play a vital role in integrating private land into landscape connectivity. This session focuses on the role of land trusts in contributing to landscape connectivity and conserving private land at pinch-point locations for wildlife movement. We’ll discuss the challenges, lessons learned, best practices, and emerging science and spatial products for connectivity conservation. We'll talk about the importance of private land conservation at discrete locations: on either side of a roadway where wildlife must move and are frequently hit by vehicles. We’ll discuss the role land trusts can play in the land security component of successful wildlife infrastructure projects, which received a major funding boost under the recent federal infrastructure law.Finally, we’ll include examples of landscape-scale conservation with land trusts and how they secured land adjacent to roads and helped mitigate the barrier to wildlife. There will be opportunities for participants to share experiences and examples of how they have engaged in these issues.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F01. Nature-Based Opportunities with the National Coastal Resilience Fund
As communities across the country experience intensifying climate-driven and water-related hazards, land trusts will be essential for expanding local resilience. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s (NFWF) National Coastal Resilience Fund (NCRF) provides opportunities for land trusts and community organizations to invest in sustainable, nature-based resilience solutions. Over the next 3-4 years, the NCRF will have over $140 million in available annual funding to support communities’ resilience-building efforts. With this in mind, NFWF has contracted Throwe Environmental to serve as Field Liaison for the NCRF program, helping to address capacity limitations felt by many communities and organizations. Throwe’s workshop will introduce potential applicants to the NCRF program. The presentation will cover three main topics related to the NCRF. The first will consist of a comprehensive overview of the program. Potential applicants will be introduced to the funding opportunity and gain an understanding of core program components. The second topic introduces participants to the Field Liaisons, informing them about the type of assistance that is available, how to best utilize liaison services, and how to develop the most competitive proposals. The final topic capitalizes on the unique opportunities land trusts offer to address climate resilience through nature-based solutions. Here, we will discuss NCRF opportunities specifically as they relate to land trusts. Participants will leave this presentation with a clear understanding of the NCRF program, insight as to how to leverage NCRF funding for the greatest impact, and the ability to identify nature-based opportunities with the potential to catalyze larger conservation efforts.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F02. Addressing Conservation and Climate through Collaborative Partnerships
Learn how land trusts in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are using collaborative partnerships to accelerate land conservation, address climate resiliency, and participate in the large-scale regulatory framework of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. Hear from the Delmarva Restoration and Conservation Network (DRCN), the Southern Maryland Conservation Alliance (SMCA), and the Heart of Maryland Conservation Alliance (HMCA) as they offer innovative approaches to working with diverse stakeholders to meet mutual goals for the restoration of the largest estuary in the United States. As a Land and Water Initiative grantee, HMCA host-partner Catoctin Land Trust worked with other LWI grantees to envision a conservation values-based GIS reporting platform that provides parcel-level detail on an array of metrics. The American Chestnut Land Trust coordinates land conservation and restoration efforts within the five-county “Southern Maryland” region and is a lead partner of the SMCA. Lower Shore Land Trust, a LWI grantee, is a lead partner of the DRCN. The network uses green nature-based infrastructure solutions for restoration and targeted land and water conservation for protection, including areas of future importance such as marsh migration corridors. These three models show landscape-level vision and operating plans that aim to secure the economy and environment in the face of rapid climate change and continued land development stress.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F03. We Might Lose?! Mediating a Violation and Managing Your Attorney in the Process
The Rally Players return! Through a (hopefully humorous) skit, a cast of all too experienced practitioners will explore a land trust navigating a typical violation of all too common easement language: a secondary landowner constructing a new home where, in the eyes of the land trust, the conservation easement specifically prohibits it. But the new owner disagrees! We’ll focus on the importance of consistent annual monitoring and documentation. Then will turn to early and candid but still diplomatic engagement with the offending landowner before moving toward selecting the right competent, knowledgeable trial counsel for the case presented. We’ll then take the audience into now ubiquitous court-ordered mandatory mediation (aka alternative dispute resolution) to emphasize the importance of selecting a mediator and the dynamics in play among the parties, their respective counsel, and the mediator, and their respective perspectives. And we’ll touch on some of the considerations the land trust is likely to experience in that process.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
Price: Spkr193
F04. Easements Go Global: Private Lands Conservation Agreements in Europe, Australia, Chile and…
This is an exciting time for private lands conservation around the world. A diverse range of countries have developed and are protecting land using private lands conservation agreements, many of which have been adapted from conservation easements in the US, but with fascinating differences that are relevant to land trust practice in this country. Our panel of private lands conservation leaders will discuss agreements that are protecting habitat, species, and working lands in France, Spain, Finland, Australia, and Chile, and will touch on other geographies around the world. Land trusts in the US have a great deal to teach and to learn from these countries and their land protection agreements. Our panelists will discuss private lands agreements in both Common and Civil Law countries, and will explain how these agreements are structured, the conservation values they protect, how they are monitored and enforced, and the challenges and opportunities faced by the public and private organizations using them.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F05. Climate Change Education: Changing Hearts and Minds
This session will give an overview of the C-Change Conversations Primer that has been widely and successfully presented to moderate and conservative audiences across the country and universally receives high marks for its non-partisan scientific approach. It has been credited with changing "hearts and minds" across the country, including most recently in Little Rock, AK, and Athens, GA. It has also been favorably reviewed by Republican staff on the Hill as well as acclaimed scientists and provides a 360-degree view of the issue. Reaching groups like land trust supporters to deliver compelling data from trusted sources is critical to expanding our country's understanding of the risks of a changing climate and to shifting the perception of climate change from a political issue to a human one that will affect everyone
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F06. Conservation Planning for Agricultural Land
So much land to save, so little time. Most land trusts simply don’t have the capacity to do every conservation project that comes their way. Strategic conservation planning is a crucial tool for land trusts to focus their time, energy, and funding to allow them to preserve the land that matters most. In this session, you will hear from Connecticut Farmland Trust, a statewide agricultural land trust, and The Land Trust for Tennessee, a statewide land trust, about their recent strategic conservation planning processes. Aside from giving staff the freedom to say “no” to some projects and an enthusiastic “yes” to others, the strategic conservation planning process has had other, more unexpected outcomes. New funding streams! Creative new programs! New partnerships! Learn how a strategic conservation plan can help you refocus your priorities and take your land trust to the next level. Guiding questions such as “what type of land is most important to conserve?” and “who are we conserving this land for?” will frame the conversation around equity and the future of land conservation. Participants will come away with a deeper understanding of strategic conservation planning, how it’s done, and what the potential benefits are for their land trust.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F07. Federal Tax Issues: Latest and Greatest 2022 (CLE)
Cases are coming in red hot from the courts and IRS! We’ll bring everyone up to speed on the latest developments in tax-related case law and actions to curtail conservation easement syndicated deals.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
CLE: CLE
F08. Integrated Community Conservation:Intersecting Restoration, Tribal Partnerships, Housing and Climate
The Mariposa Creek Parkway Initiative is a model for multi benefit community conservation in which the central riparian corridor of a community is the anchor and epicenter of partnership building. This session will describe how a local land trust, Tribe, local government, and arts organizations are working together to address community needs including land preservation, restoration incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Tribal engagement, housing, recreation, and economic development. The project partners will detail lessons learned including keys to partnership development and addressing pain points. Lear about multi-stakeholder project structure, diversifying financing and resource development. Sierra Foothill Conservancy (SFC) and partners will describe their roles in the planning, acquisition of property, funding structure, and how securing the land enabled a cascade of benefits, including innovative partnership development, restoration (in the form of fuels management, native planting, invasive removal), education, affordable housing, economic vitality, and the arts. The Mariposa Creek Parkway Initiative is a transformational community partnership amongst the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, County of Mariposa, Mariposa Arts Council, community development organizations and non-profit affordable housing developers and the local trust which can serve as a model for the pluralistic future of conservation.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F09. Retrofitting, Green Networks and Quality of Life in the Inner Suburbs
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F10. Making the Most of Your Accreditation Seal
You earned it, now promote it! The accreditation seal means your land trust has been verified to be operating at the highest national conservation standards. Join us for a discussion on promoting your accredited status on your website, social media and fundraising endeavors. We also will be soliciting feedback on a new accreditation promotional toolkit.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F11. Raising Money for Now and Raising Money for Later
Legacy Match Campaigns are matching grant campaigns that incentivize donors to disclose that they have left the land trust in their wills. For every donor who does advise the land trust of their bequest intentions in writing, a set amount of money is released from the grant. In this workshop, we will explore Legacy Match Campaigns from two different perspectives – the perspective of a donor putting up the matching grant and the perspective of the land trusts running the campaigns. We’ll discuss securing the matching grant itself, planning out the campaign, and follow-through strategies. And we’ll split up into discussion groups to further imagine more localized applications. This is an idea that can and should be applicable everywhere and with land trusts of just about any size.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F12. From Land Trusts to Landscapes: How Capacity Funding Brings Conservation to Scale
We face systems-level challenges in today’s world, including addressing the interwoven climate, biodiversity, and environmental justice crises. Such challenges reveal the need for conservation to be a systems-level solution, rooted in an understanding of the web of interconnections—biological and sociocultural—in which we operate. Working at the landscape scale is critical for solving these systems-level challenges. As land trusts embrace landscape scale conservation, collaboration among land trusts and with many additional stakeholders is essential to success, but there is little funding available to support collaborative processes. As one practitioner notes, “Grantors are just interested in the project…it’s like they think that the part that makes the project happen, the collaborative structure that allows us to do this work—all of that just happens on its own and doesn’t take any resources or investment.” In reality though, building and sustaining the collaboration that yields impactful conservation projects requires significant time, energy, and skill. Using the Landscape Conservation Catalyst Fund as a case study, representatives of two land trusts will talk about how Catalyst Fund investments helped them build effective landscape collaboration. We will then explore the opportunity for land trusts to participate in increasing national investments in collaborative processes to bring conservation to scale as a practical response to the systems-level challenges we face. The workshop will conclude with a discussion among participants of strategies for land trusts to sustain their collaborative approaches to conservation.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans
F13. Protecting River Corridors for Climate, Flood and Drought Resiliency
In Montana (and much of the West), river corridors have been modified or channelized for infrastructure, transportation, and agricultural production. Cumulatively, these modifications reduce the ecological benefits of natural fluvial processes at a time when climate change is causing historic fire, flooding, and drought across the country. These events are becoming more common and severe with impacts from climate change. In response, climate adaptation tactics are critical to build drought and flood resilience at large scales. It’s critical to incentivize riparian corridor preservation, which is a unique and effective conservation strategy designed to enable large rivers and their floodplains to function at their fullest potential. Protecting floodplain connectivity, offers flood hazard mitigation, and drought and climate resiliency. This presentation will cover tools, strategies, and challenges in Montana to protect river and floodplain corridors for these reasons.
Session Location: Marriott New Orleans