Strategic Plan: 2018-2022
Land Is the Answer
Land tells the story of America: Historically, it shaped us as a people; today, it is the key to a healthy and secure future for all Americans. It provides pure drinking water, healthy food, clean air and places to reflect and recreate. Conserved, well-managed land also provides protection from natural disasters, such as floods and drought, as well as absorbs and keeps carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere.
No one knows this better than the members of the land trust community, who demonstrate daily that land is the answer to so many problems that confront our society. Yet we face a number of serious impediments to our land conservation work.
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges is that most Americans have never heard of land trusts. Land and land conservation play little or no role in their lives, at least as far as they are aware. Land trusts continue to rely upon the support and engagement of a sliver of the American populace — a sliver that is far too uniform in terms of race, ethnicity, age, affluence and other characteristics.
But there is reason for hope.
Private land conservation reflects American ideals on which we all can agree, regardless of political leanings or party affiliation. In particular, land trusts champion an approach to conservation premised on personal initiative, landowner empowerment and charity — core American values.
Our community can capitalize on these attributes to elevate land conservation as a priority nationwide. The Land Trust Alliance envisions a reenergized, more relevant conservation movement in which land trusts join with partners that have not traditionally identified as conservation organizations around our shared interest in protecting special places — from urban playgrounds to native prairies, from family farms to old-growth forests and from coastal wetlands to cactus-studded deserts. Together we are committed to advancing local conservation initiatives that are community-based, inclusive, voluntary, nonpartisan and enduring.
We will help people find common ground as they get outside and together see, touch, smell and protect what is real and what is beautiful. We commit that we will not only serve communities but actually build communities, planting the seeds for a nation to come back together, starting with a steadfast love of the land.
Executive Summary
To tap the tremendous potential of the land to address societal challenges, and build on its successes in increasing the pace, quality and permanence of land conservation in America, the Alliance has set four strategic conservation goals for 2018-2022.
Learn more about these goals, our strategic approach to accomplish them and more in the executive summary
To read the complete strategic plan, click here