Yesterday, the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department issued final regulations that will drastically erode state tax incentives for landowners who donate land or conservation easements to land trusts.

The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program is perhaps "the most critical tool that we have to stop the fragmentation and development of working lands."

Gerald Adelmann is president and CEO of Openlands, an accredited land trust serving the greater Chicago region. He has worked in conservation for over 30 years. His is the first in a series of interviews with land trust people that will run intermittently.

Land trusts around the country have joined the fight to protect native pollinators, which are essential to the planet and to human life, allowing for the reproduction of over 85% of the world's flowering plants and two-thirds of the world's crop species.

With blue skies and wind blowing wisps of black hair into her eyes, her small hands searched the rocky ground for a link to her past: a small, edible root connecting her to both past and future as she assumes her rightful place as a Nez Perce child belonging to the land known as the Wallowa Valley.

"When my grandmother lived in a nursing home, she told me that her friends were from farms or often talked about being outside. That's when I made it my mission to bring the outdoors in."

The Oregon-based Wetlands Conservancy (accredited) has been conserving wetlands for 37 years and serving up its mission through the taste buds of Portland residents for nearly a decade.

Most conservationists I know can remember the moment they were inspired to conserve land. For some, it goes all the way back to a childhood spent outdoors; for others, it was a special moment in school or on the land. For me, it was 2005, in my driveway.

Imagine a junkyard. Picture a car crusher in operation for 50 years. Add to that vision 100,000 tons of broken concrete. This isn't a sight that inspires thoughts of conservation, is it?

When I first joined the Conservation Foundation of the Gulf Coast in Florida, I was unsure that an archaeologist-become-environmental educator would be a good fit for a field that seemed filled with highly educated biologists and ecologists.