Getting to Know You

Land trusts that take the time to learn what their community members want and need form strong, lasting relationships.

Community conservation isn’t what we do,” says Tom Sanford, executive director of the accredited North Olympic Land Trust. “It’s how we do it.”

As challenges build for global and local communities alike—climate change, economic downturns, health concerns, a breakdown in civil discourse—land trusts are deepening relationships and building relevance through conservation that is true to their communities’ needs and cultures.

Four land trusts around the country show how community conservation takes shape in ways as diverse as the people they serve—yet the benefits of these relationships are the same.

Taos Land Trust: “It brought us back to life”

Community conservation is the reason Taos Land Trust didn’t close its doors forever in 2012.

Since 1988, Taos Land Trust had operated in a project-based, grant-funded way to protect northern New Mexico’s landscapes. Then two executive directors in a row left, funding ran out and “conservation as usual” couldn’t keep the doors open. The board wrestled with how to manage conservation work that should last into perpetuity.

Current Executive Director Kristina Ortez was hired with just enough funding to work 10 to 15 hours per week to help figure out next steps. “In the year we were closed,” she says, “we lost a lot of trust in the community. We didn’t know what they wanted us to do.”

So in partnership with the accredited Trust for Public Land and multiple local organizations, Taos Land Trust embarked on a multi-year project, investing substantial funds in a five-part community engagement and mapping process. “This changed our direction,” says Ortez.

Initially they hosted a series of workshops, which boasted successful attendance numbers, but the same people—almost all white, retired and financially secure—showed up each time. “We were grateful for their participation,” Ortez says, “but it didn’t tell us the full story.”

Taos County is tri-cultural, comprised of Hispano/Latino, Taos Pueblo and Anglo residents. The land trust had historically done the majority of its work with Anglo landowners. To get a more accurate sense of community needs, they began interviews and focus groups, concentrating on Hispano and Pueblo residents, and on artists, teachers and farmers.

“Our planning is based on community outreach but also driven by data,” says Ortez. They overlaid community priorities with data they gathered about wetlands, water sources, soils, existing trails and more. This was especially important given the different conservation priorities that emerged between Anglo, Hispano and Pueblo residents.

During the process, the land trust identified a parcel of land representing everything the community prioritized: water, agriculture, habitat and recreation potential. “This piece of land has been our other transformation,” Ortez says.

The property, purchased in 2015, now houses the land trust headquarters and Rio Fernando Park, set to open to the public around Earth Week 2020.

Overcoming such serious challenges has required serious investment. Ortez is thankful for “amazing donors” along the way, as well as funding through the Trust for Public Land, the Land Trust Alliance and the National Recreation and Park Association, all of which enabled the land trust to invest in the community engagement and mapping process while also being able to hire several full-time staff and begin farmland and wetland restoration in Rio Fernando Park.

“We can now create an ambassador landscape that meets community needs,” Ortez says, “and do remarkable demonstration projects on invasive species, wetland restoration and sustainable agriculture.”

“We’re building trust,” she says of her accredited land trust. “We can do the projects we used to do, and we’re building community support to allow us to work on projects that we can support financially, like lands held by folks who are land rich and cash poor.”

How does a land trust come back from such a huge setback? Ortez sums it up: “Talking with the community. Opening yourself up to what’s wrong with your organization. Opening up to hope and possibility.”

Potomac Conservancy: “Conservation over credit”

“I help people get their hands dirty and their feet wet for clean water,” says Katie Blackman, the accredited Potomac Conservancy’s senior director of community conservation. “I help them take collective action.”

Those actions include tree plantings, collecting native seeds for reforestation and cleaning up litter. (The conservancy, headquartered in Maryland, has helped its community prevent about 250,000 pounds of trash from entering the Potomac, the “Nation’s River.”) Summertime also means “alternative happy hours”—two-hour community paddles down the Potomac. 

“If we can get people out to do something positive, if we can introduce them to the Potomac or deepen their connection,” Blackman says, “they’ll be in a position to protect it.” 

Potomac Conservancy was started about 25 years ago by a community of paddlers. “People were missing then from the environmental messaging,” Blackman notes. “About 12 years ago, the current president updated our mission to include ‘connect people to our natural treasure.’” 

Potomac Conservancy now has two full-time positions dedicated to community conservation. “It’s a big investment for a small organization,” says Blackman.

The continuing evolution of community conservation has been guided by this core belief: “Conservation over credit—the more power and authority we turn over to communities, the better,” Blackman says.

They’re currently restructuring the program to better reflect that core belief. “We’re creating teams of volunteers who can do work and organize work in their own communities,” she says. 

Blackman names two long-time volunteers who attend practically every event. When the conservancy was down a staff member, Blackman says, “We didn’t miss a beat because they ran with it.” They have become founding members of the new volunteer leadership team. 

"Putting power in volunteers’ hands is conservation over credit,” Blackman says. So is creating strong, strategic partnerships. “We’re also working with groups like Outdoor Afro, Latino Outdoors, Green Muslims, Corazón Latino, creating inclusive spaces outdoors."

Blackman notes the conservancy isn’t always the right messenger. “We look for organizations with a record of working with untapped communities. There’s a wealth of power historically excluded from the environmental movement and yet those who hold it are the most impacted. Without them, we cannot succeed.” 

LandPaths: “Diverse, like an ecosystem”

In 2002, Executive Director Craig Anderson set out to diversify LandPaths, a Sonoma County, California, land trust. “It’s a lot harder than a ‘translate this website’ button,” Anderson says. Change started with a new diversity statement to guide hiring.

“We couldn’t ask the community to be part of our work unless we changed ourselves,” Anderson says. “We didn’t realize that by becoming more diverse, understanding more diverse needs, that we would back our way into community conservation.” 

Anderson defines LandPaths’ community as the “full spectrum of cultures, languages, skin colors and narratives.” Omar Gallardo, new audiences manager at LandPaths, adds, “It’s great to get highlighted for our relationship with the Latino community, but that’s just the start.” 

Community conservation is “best when it’s diverse, like an ecosystem,” Anderson says. “It’s all these different factors and people and wild places and agriculture that come together to create a healthy place for our kids and grandkids.”

LandPaths constantly evaluates the cultural relevance of its work. “My job is going out in the community,” Gallardo says, “asking people who work long hours outside, on someone else’s land, to come back out and hike or do physical work, and promising they’ll cherish this experience with their family. It’s intimidating.”

Gallardo emphasizes community ownership as a way to connect people to conservation. “LandPaths only holds the title or manages the land,” Gallardo says. “We tell community members the land is theirs, and they are actively building community with everyone else who’s working there and pouring sweat into it.” 

Outreach is not always successful. “We learn from that,” Gallardo says. “And we show we’re committed to people because we’re constantly there.” 

Two tangible examples of presence and community ownership are the Santa Rosa urban farms LandPaths manages.

“We started Bayer Farm in 2006. People said, ‘That isn’t land trust work,’ ” Anderson recalls. “It was a pipeline to get to all the other land we were protecting. The people around now accept us. They now go to our other preserves outside the urban area.”

Two-acre Bayer Farm is in walking distance of eight schools. “We nurture healthy children and families through our programming,” Gallardo says. “Kids are growing up in the garden. Families are doing what they know, reconnecting with their childhood or the place they left.”

LandPaths has lost donors who disagree with its community conservation efforts. But, Anderson says, the community itself has stepped up its support.

There’s risk in breaking new ground, in expanding the definition of community. But Anderson encourages other land trusts to reach out to people and to partners “where you’re not sure you’ll be invited in.” 

North Olympic Land Trust:  "It's all building community"

“This organization had always seen itself as the land trust of this community,” says Tom Sanford, executive director of the North Olympic Land Trust in Washington state. “In recent years, we’ve done tangible things to formalize and purposefully talk about it.”

Sanford credits Land Trust Alliance conferences and leadership programs with helping him put language to the concept and create a community engagement staff position.

When the land trust updated its strategic plan in 2017, it included a top-level goal to foster a community-wide land ethic that balances habitat, resources and aesthetics. “When these three things are in balance, they support each other and the community," Sanford explains. And when the land trust allows this to guide its strategy, he adds, "We're not just saving specific pieces of land, we're building community in the process."

The land trust staff members participate in their community outside of conservation, too. Sanford, for example, sits on the board of the area’s Federally Qualified Health Center, which seeks to provide healthcare access to all people regardless of ability to pay. 

“In my view, this isn’t radically different than land conservation,” Sanford says. “You need clean air and water, places to recreate, the healing power of nature. You also need access to quality healthcare and a strong economy that can support schools. It’s all building a healthy community.”   

Sanford advises other land trusts, “Don’t get pigeonholed into one specific role. Take a posture of listening.”

Right now the land trust is listening closely to conversations about affordable housing, and asking, “How can we build community in a way that provides access to affordable housing and keeps the environment safe?” As climate change displaces more and more people, the needs of climate migrants will also become a larger part of this conversation. Through presence and listening, Sanford hopes to help the community make healthy decisions.

“Our board has led on this. They’ve embraced this as how we do work,” Sanford says. “It’s not an extra or an add-on.” This is so important because if it were thought of as “normal land trust operations vs. community conservation," Sanford says, "it would be on the cutting block when the next recession hits."

Worth the challenge

Land trusts that take the time to get to know their communities are doing both the right thing and the smart thing; they are taking steps to ensure their survival and the survival of land conservation into the future. And each organization’s path to transformation is unique.

“It’s been fun over the past couple of years to watch our organization shift from a group that had its head down focused on completing projects, to an organization that is becoming deeply embedded in a variety of our community’s efforts,” Sanford says. 

Anderson adds, “The real challenge is letting go and allowing the community to guide us.” 

Meghan McDonald is a freelance writer focused on science, sustainability and nonprofits.

Photos

• The BIO STEAM LAB @Taos Land Trust, a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics-focused environmental education youth program, raises awareness of local and global environmental issues as part of the Rio Fernando Park’s mission. Photo by Jim O'Donnell.
• Volunteers at Fletcher’s Cove in C&O Canal National Historic Park help Potomac Conservancy keep the Potomac River Clean. Photo from the Potomac Conservancy.
• Students on a field trip as part of the In Our Own Backyard program visit Bayer Farm, one of LandPath's urban properties. Photo from LandPaths.