Conservation Defense

Highlights

• Developer Attempts to Extinguish Easement and Build Houses
• Clash of Conservation Values over Wolves
• Timber Trespass Resolved in Five Months without Litigation

The Conservation Defense Initiative has three components:

1. Conservation Defense Center
Provides networking, education and legal information to attorneys and land trusts on conservation defense.

• Clearinghouse*
• Attorney Locator*
• Attorney Network
• Special Training Opportunities

2. Conservation Defense Fund
Used by the Alliance to assist land trusts facing precedent-setting legal challenges to their conservation easements and land holdings.  The Fund is not a replacement for land trust legal defense funds and stewardship endowments.

3. Conservation Defense Insurance
At their June 5, 2009 meeting, the Alliance board approved the terms of a potential program to cover the costs of enforcing and defending easements and protecting land trust land. A minimum of 12,000 easements or fee parcels for this program were needed to be feasible, and efforts have been underway to secure the commitments and receive land trust feedback on their willingness to participate.

Recently at Rally 2010 (October 2-5), the Land Trust Alliance board voted to proceed with the next step in creating the proposed conservation defense insurance program: capitalizing the program with $4 million. They took this important step after reviewing the research and proposed structure, and hearing the demand for this program from the over 463 land trusts that have formally committed more than 18,411 conservation easements and fee owned parcels to participate.

For information on any of these programs, please contact Leslie Ratley-Beach, Alliance Conservation Defense Director, at lrbeach@lta.org.

*Access is offered to board, staff and volunteers of Alliance member land trusts and organizational partners, and to individual members at the $250 level and above.