Conservation Defense Center

The Conservation Defense Center is a bundle of tools and services coordinated by the Alliance to help land trusts uphold conservation permanence.  These are both proactive - avoiding  unnecessary litigation and other challenges - and reactive - assisting in taking effective action, when necessary.

The Conservation Defense Center provides:

• A legal clearinghouse* stocked with a wide variety of legal information on conservation defense for land trusts, including cases and related materials; practical tips; law review article, statutes; tax code and sample documents.  This has a new search engine that makes it fast and easy to find just the information you need.
• An attorney locator database,* listing experienced conservation attorneys by state and by specialty.  Note: if you are an attorney, see if your record is there and update it!
• Monthly eNews updates about the latest news in conservation defense, and look for the articles on conservation defense in every issue of Saving Land.
• Private forums for experienced senior practitioners and conservation attorneys in the conservation defense network to discuss the latest developments and devise resources for land trusts to meet challenges successfully.
• Outreach, personal technical assistance and advanced continuing training to help prevent legal problems for land trusts and help resolve them when problems do occur. Legal and conservation education events for attorneys, land trusts, law students and regulators.
• Resources to promote positive changes to state conservation law and policy.  These resources include 50 state surveys of laws, such as conservation enabling acts, to reveal new approaches and gaps on emerging issues, model legislation, policy alerts, resources to respond to regulators, and information sharing about advancements in other states.
• Law school partnerships to provide research, resources and tools to land trusts. The Allaince currently partners with Vermont Law School and Indiana Conservation Law Center. Law schools interested in developing a partnership with the Alliance should call or write Leslie Ratley-Beach at 802-262-6051 or e-mail lrbeach@lta.org.

For more information, call or write Leslie Ratley-Beach at 802-262-6051 or e-mail lrbeach@lta.org.

*Available to Alliance member land trusts and partners, and to individual donors at the $250 level and above.