2019 Schedule

As the 2019 United Nations IPCC Land and Climate report notes, land use practices, conservation, and restoration have a tremendous role to play in solving the climate crisis. This session will train attendees on new strategies and tools developed by the Trust for Public Land and others to help NGOs, state agencies, and others prioritize land conservation and park creation to maximize climate benefits. Attendees will learn how to use the Forest Carbon Map to answer three key questions: 1) where are existing forest carbon stocks, 2) where are the threats to those carbon stocks, and 3) where can conservation provide co-benefits and have the greatest impact. Attendees will also learn how communities across the country are using tools, such as the Climate-Smart Cities framework, to address climate equity through green infrastructure, parks, and open space planning and implementation. Attendees will leave with a holistic view of parks and open space, a framework for prioritizing land and water conservation, and opportunities for further engagement in developing new GIS-based tools.

This session will be a panel discussion among staff of land trusts that represent diverse communities with strong historical dependency on access to land that is now conserved. Working with these communities, the panelists have identified basic needs of community members that are not traditionally addressed by land trust stewardship practices. Many of these needs help to preserve ways of life and community connections to land stewardship that have evolved through centuries of close association with natural landscapes while harvesting firewood, foraging, collecting shellfish, exercising food sovereignty, practicing native religious rites, grazing livestock, tapping maple sugar, and collecting materials for traditional folkcrafts. Although potentially challenging within a traditional land trust model of conservation, by restoring or maintaining these connections to the land, land trusts can help to ensure longevity, equity, and relevance in a society that is increasingly disconnected from its natural heritage. Audience members will be encouraged to join the conversation and share their own experiences with addressing community needs while upholding traditional conservation values.

With each transaction, land trusts commit to protect their conservation lands in perpetuity. Stewardship of these lands is essential to ensure their conservation values endure. Stewardship staff are tasked not only with traditional land management activities, but also the challenge of ensuring that these lands and their conservation values are resilient in the face of climate change and other emerging stressors. The purpose of this workshop is to introduce land trust stewardship staff with the concepts, principles, and tools required to assess climate vulnerabilities to their conservation lands and design climate-smart stewardship and restoration actions to increase resiliency. Point Blue will draw on examples from climate-smart restoration, management, and monitoring projects in diverse riparian, wetland, and grassland systems in California to illustrate how application of simple principles can result in innovative projects leading to resilient, multi-benefit outcomes for wildlife, ecosystems, and human communities. Participants will leave the workshop with an understanding of how to apply climate-smart principles in fee land management planning and stewardship projects to increase the resiliency of conservation values, and with a “toolbox” of climate-smart stewardship resources. This session is ideal for land trust stewardship staff currently developing or revising a stewardship plan or planning for a specific stewardship or restoration project.

Climate change is the most pressing challenge facing people and nature in North America. Natural climate solutions, such as harnessing nature's ability to mitigate flood risk or offset carbon emissions, provide readily available and cost-effective solutions that directly address these challenges and yield multiple benefits to people and nature. This session will use coastal North Carolina as an example and detail how significant climate risks (and opportunities) drove the development of a comprehensive approach to adapting to and mitigating climate change through conservation. Participants will learn about assessing climate risk and ways to incorporate natural solutions into their own conservation portfolio. We will outline the importance of forging new partnerships with community leaders and leveraging existing policy and market mechanisms to increase the scale and impact of conservation. Specifically, we will discuss our work with communities to leverage familiar programs like the National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System to value natural system conservation as a preferred approach to address flood risk. This session will also cover our development of a carbon accounting methodology to reduce carbon emissions and drive pocosin restoration at scale through the sale of carbon offsets. Finally, participants will learn about how regional-scale management of natural systems like oyster reefs is critical to ensure the long-term stability of these solutions.

Land managers have collectively spent millions of hours and dollars trying to combat non-native invasive species. In some cases, those efforts have restored important habitat that benefit a wide range of wildlife and plant species. In other instances, the efforts to eradicate invasive species are ongoing with no end in sight. In still other cases, critics may argue that the efforts to combat a non-native species cause more harm to the local environment than the invasive species of concern. In this workshop we will explore the ecology and context of invasive species and look at several different tactics and tools that land managers employ to control them. We will look at several different invasive species from around the country and discuss herbicides and how they are used to combat invasive species. We discuss why certain plants are deemed to be a problem and why they are adapted to the niche they are in. We will also talk about alternatives to herbicide treatments, ways to get volunteers involved in land management, and philosophic outlooks on this work that may help prevent getting discouraged by the scale of the problem and limitations of the work. The workshop will include a lot of participation from attendees, with discussions that identify species of concern and control methods that have succeeded and failed.

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires land trust owned and managed natural areas and conservation easement properties open to the public to be accessible. Fortunately, some land trusts have found ways to design (and redesign) trails and recreational spaces so that everyone can use them. This workshop will cover laws and regulations you need to know about as well as practical advice on how to build accessible trails. Rules on ATVs and Other Power Driven Mobility Devices, access for Service Animals, and requirements for providing sign language interpreters and other accommodations will be introduced. In addition, using real-world examples from the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, you will learn how to plan and manage an accessible trail project from soup to nuts: organizing, budgeting, raising funds, communications, permitting, building the trail, partnerships, and celebrations.

Land prices are among the biggest barriers for new farmers, especially for local meat producers, who typically require more acreage for livestock and need close proximity to urban markets. In 2018, the CEFS’ NC Choices program received a USDA grant to help beginning pasture based meat farmers gain access to land by obtaining leases in either pasture-based or silvopasture systems (the integration of trees, livestock, and forage management) on protected lands. Project partners include a mix of Cooperative Extension specialists, researchers, agri-businesses, farmers, and The Triangle Land Conservancy who has committed 30+ acres toward this project. This session will cover the project to date including strategies for developing partnerships to incorporate livestock systems on protected lands, budgeting and stage infrastructure costs, grazing plans, and finding the right “match” for farmers and land trusts.

With the growing desire for more environmentally responsible endings, more people of all cultural, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds are seeking natural burials. Nearly a dozen land trusts in the US have entered into conservation easements that include burial on the property, conserving and stewarding more land. Each burial ground is as different in its management style as its landscape, and each conservation entity has its own set of practical concerns. This workshop will look at burial grounds as tools for land trusts seeking to strengthen people’s relationship to the land through burial, and to build community relevance and resources for land protection by examining these projects from an “eye to eye” perspective. The workshop will highlight the project development process and day-to-day functioning of two burial ground models: the land trust as owner-operator and the land trust as conservation easement holder. Sara Brink from The Wilderness Center will describe the philosophy, ownership and operational structure for Foxfield Preserve. Kieran Roe from Conserving Carolina will describe how they entered into relationship with Carolina Memorial Sanctuary and hold its conservation easement. Both land trusts will reveal the critical decision points for their organizations along the way. Participants will be introduced to a new Land Trust and Conservation Burial Ground Assessment Tool developed specifically for this workshop.

We know that purposefully returning fire to a protected landscape can be an effective way to meet stewardship goals, especially in the face of a changing climate. But actually conducting a prescribed burn can be daunting for individual land trusts, raising significant questions about appropriate planning, staff training, public perception and liability. This panel explores how land trusts from around the country have used partnerships—with nonprofits, tribes, fire councils, landowners and local, state, and federal agencies—to overcome these obstacles. Be prepared to leave feeling more empowered, excited and prepared to add prescribed burning to your land stewardship strategy.

Across the country, the need to protect drinking water for the citizens and businesses in our communities is bringing together land trusts, water utilities, governments and other partners to develop large-scale, strategic land conservation programs. At a time when the threats to our water are growing – from development, contaminants, pollution and a changing climate – watershed protection efforts provide win-win solutions for communities, local economies and the environment. This workshop will provide case studies of four different watershed protection programs. Each example involves a unique geographic and political context, but key components are present throughout, like catalyzing events and/or actors, partnerships and collaboration, science-based planning, and innovative funding. Through the case studies, we will explore how these elements have come together in different places to create a successful program, hear lessons learned, and discuss opportunities for funding watershed protection. Watershed protection is essential for community resilience in a changing climate. It helps ensure that ecosystem services like flood control, water filtration, groundwater recharge, and drinking water continue for our towns and cities. Every land trust can play a role in improving watershed health, collaborate across jurisdictions and boundaries to explore what is possible at the watershed or river basin scale, and act to protect and maintain watershed function and services.

Join other land management staff and experienced volunteers for a special round-table session. This peer-to-peer learning opportunity provides time and space for you to discuss common and emerging issues with preserve management, including adaptation to climate change, ensuring we are welcoming to everyone, and dealing with natural disasters.  Other subjects will be decided by the group and we will include time to celebrate your successes.

Ever increasing in popularity, trails and recreational access are increasingly incorporated into land trust conservation projects. Trails facilitate physical and emotional human connection to the natural world that increase relevancy of land conservation. But not all trails are created equal—those not carefully planned, designed, built and managed can become detriments to conservation values that land trusts first sought to protect. A relatively new science, trail sustainability is still unknown to many land trusts. By understanding & implementing its principals, land trusts can effectively balance public recreation and natural resource protection. A sustainable trail will minimize impact to conservation values, reduce management burden and offer an enhanced user experience—a win-win-win that will convince even the most staunch skeptics of public access. Presenters will interactively showcase bad vs. sustainable trails, convey critical concepts in developing trails to minimize impact to resources, and demonstrate how to capably incorporate recreation on protected lands while being sensitive to conservation values. This workshop will introduce a sustainable trails standards and policy developed and adopted by Conserving Carolina and present it as a model for developing initial trails policy by other land trusts.

In eastern Maine between Penobscot Bay and the Canadian Border the Eastern Maine coastal current bathes the rocky coast with cold nutrient rich water and the boreal forest meets the coast. This unique ecosystem is 97% forested, and still home to all its native sea-run and marine fish species. It also continues to support the human communities that have depended on these fish for thousands of years. Human induced change has put the ecosystem and communities in peril, but with all the pieces still in place there is an opportunity. This session will focus on how a diverse group of organizations have joined together to try a new approach to landscape scale conservation and management of land and water resources. The Downeast Fisheries Partnership believes that embracing and engaging the culture and knowledge of the community and developing an ecosystem-based co-management model will further our organizational missions, to stabilize and restore ecosystems, communities, and the regional economy. Telling this story will be staff from a state-wide land trust, a marine fisheries organization, and a regional economic development non-profit. To achieve the broad scale restoration of iconic species like cod and Atlantic salmon and ensure the viability of communities, that have been intertwined with these species for thousands of years, the group is taking a new approach. Diverse partners, real community engagement and a new co-management model that works at a biologically relevant scale.

Historic land use and an ever-increasing population of invasive plants has severely degraded the forests of Sandy Mush, a high priority conservation area occupying 51,000 acres in the Southern Blue Ridge Ecoregion outside of Asheville. While approximately 20% of this area has been protected, the remainder is owned primarily by family forest landowners. Most of these landowners don't have the disposable income necessary to invest in restoring forest health. In the absence of planning and management, forests continue to degrade impacting resiliency on a landscape scale. EcoForesters, Forest Stewards Guild and Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy have partnered to turn the tide of forest degradation in Sandy Mush. Our approach has three major components: engaging diverse forest landowners and stakeholders in the community through outreach and coalition building, prioritizing forest restoration treatments and promoting sustainable practices and leveraging financial instruments to make forest restoration treatments economically feasible long-term. The forest health issues in Sandy Mush are representative of what is occurring to forestland throughout the Appalachian region, where unsustainable management and a suite of invasive species are destroying productive and diverse forests. Our goal is not only to increase the ecological health and resilience of forests in Sandy Mush, but to create a model that can be replicated in other communities equally in need of forest restoration and increased resiliency.