Chesapeake Bay Land and Water Initiative Resources

To assist land trusts and their partners in their land and water work, the Chesapeake Bay Land and Water Initiative (the Initiative) develops and shares relevant resources on many subjects: policy, science, communications, fundraising and more. 

Through February 2020, the Initiative had helped deliver 40 presentations and training sessions across the watershed and beyond, with more than 100 hours of original content reaching more than 1,800 people. 

Resource Library 

We’ve highlighted some of the most requested and most utilized resources from our program. 

Working with Rural Landowners and Farmers

Our “Closing the Deal with Rural Landowners” workshops help land trusts, conservation districts and other partners be more successful in working with landowners on voluntary conservation. Here are some of the materials and results that we developed with Water Words That Work, who were our consultants on this project:

• Survey results from 45 mentors identified by their peers as “tops in the field” at outreach, on what makes them so successful and how landowners perceive the benefits and barriers of voluntary conservation options. 
• Results from focus groups on two topics: customer service and working with plain sect landowners.
• A webinar presenting the results from this research. 
• A document with links to all the resources (e.g., materials, slides, etc.) used in the Fall 2018 workshops. 

View the recording of the first in our webinar series, “(Farm) Land and Water: Success Stories from Chesapeake Land Trusts,” featuring case studies of land trusts working to protect and improve water quality on farmed lands in the Chesapeake region, Spring 2018.

Conservation Finance

Ecosystem Markets, Private Investment in Conservation and Restoration and More

One of the Initiative’s goals is to help increase access to funding — especially new, innovative or underutilized sources, like ecosystem markets, public-private partnerships and private investment for land and water work. We work with partners like the Conservation Finance Network, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake Conservation Partnership to increase awareness and knowledge of such funding opportunities.

Our 2019 Chesapeake Conservation Finance Intensive, in partnership with the Conservation Finance Network (CFN), helped to train more than 30 practitioners in conservation finance over the 2.5-day course. You can read more about it on our blog, The Dirt. We hope to be able to host another in-person training in the Chesapeake watershed in early 2021, dependent on public health guidance and safety considerations.

Here are a few resources shared during that course, courtesy of our colleagues at CFN:

Conservation Finance 101

CFN Toolkits:

• Partnering with Water Utilities
• Pay-For-Success Approaches
• Forest Carbon
• State Revolving Funds
• Ballot Measures
• Bridge Financing
• Voluntary Surcharges

Some additional conservation finance resources we have helped develop for land trusts:

• A webinar, “Private Investment in Conservation and Restoration in the Chesapeake Watershed,” presented as an introduction for an April 2019 roundtable on the same topic. Private investment capital can complement more traditional sources of funds — such as foundations, donors and public funding programs — with the potential to be deployed differently, scale up projects, or fill a different niche. The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Conservation Partnership, and the Land Trust Alliance were the convening partners for that event.
• A short, introductory briefing paper on “Private Investment in Conservation and Restoration in the Chesapeake Watershed” (written by Tim Male of Environmental Policy Innovations Center for the 2019 roundtable)
• Slides from presentations organized for the 2019 Maryland Land Conservation Conference: “Conservation Finance 101” (by the Conservation Finance Network) and “New Tools for the Conservation Toolbox: Innovative Sources of Funding.”

General Resources

• Read our Saving Land magazine article, “The Interdependence of Land and Water Protection,” Summer 2018.
• Read our Saving Land magazine article, “Water Takes Center Stage,” Winter 2019. 
• Read our blog post: “RE: Climate,” on the challenge of saltwater flooding on farmland, July 2018.
• Read our blog post: “New model land and water initiative launches,” January 2017.
• Search for land trusts in the Chesapeake Bay region via Find a Land Trust.
• “Chesapeake Bay Watershed Land Trust Assessment: Accelerating Land Conservation to Protect and Improve Water Quality,” a study commissioned by CBFN and conducted by the Alliance with Long Haul Conservation Advisors, helped to launch the Initiative in 2016.

Get In Touch

For more information, please contact Jennifer Miller Herzog, Mid-Atlantic Senior Program manager, by email or call 406-580-6410.