Stewardship: The Nitty Gritty of Forever

During my first weeks on the job, I was run out of an Aspen stand by an elk, almost struck by lightning, dive-bombed by red-tailed hawks and chased by cows. I also learned to row a drift boat, fly fish and how to jump a barbed wire fence without losing my pants…all good stuff!” You may be asking just what exactly does Paul Wendland do? Most land trust people would not be surprised to hear he’s in stewardship.

“I’m originally from Presque Isle, Michigan, but I’ve lived in six states and traveled to about 40 countries,” says Wendland, stewardship coordinator for the accredited Teton Regional Land Trust in Driggs, Idaho. Wanting to transition away from a career as a banking and finance consultant in developing countries, Wendland read Story Clark’s book A Field Guide to Conservation Finance. “It showed me that I could leverage my former career into working in conservation full time. I joined the accredited Palouse Land Trust in Idaho as a board member, which was a great hands-on introduction into conservation work. Then the position opened up at Teton Regional Land Trust. This is my dream job. I get to live and work in such a spectacular place.”

Wendland is not alone in espousing the joys of working in the stewardship field. And it’s not just the pleasure of being outside that makes the job worthwhile.

“I’ve watched the land trust grow and my job has evolved, but the work that has always had the most meaning for me personally is stewardship,” says Ian Sinks, stewardship director for the accredited Columbia Land Trust in Vancouver, Washington. “Being part of a dedicated team of people working to restore wetlands and rivers, manage forests, work with communities on common ground issues and watch (and measure) change to understand the impacts of our work makes this one of the best jobs I could imagine.”

Chatting with land trust stewardship staff — the people who monitor conservation easements or manage fee land — certain themes emerge. Those in the job for a long time have witnessed the evolution of technology. Many say that, in the early years, the excitement in land trust work was over newly acquired property or easements, but now land trusts are shifting to become stewardship organizations. And some things don’t change. All of the people in this article expressed a deep love for the land in their care, and all proclaim the absolute necessity of stewarding good relationships with landowners.

New Stewardship Technology Tools

“When I first started at Columbia Land Trust we were using slides and hand-drawn maps for grant presentations,” says Sinks. “We relied on compasses to navigate properties and had to go to government offices to get copies of aerial photographs. Now we scan the landscape from our office, navigate and collect data on our smart phones — including taking high-quality photos that are georeferenced with coordinates and orientation — GIS organizes all of our spatial data and an online database maintains property information.” After a pause, he says, “This makes me sound ancient but it’s only been 15 years. Technology has been evolving very quickly to the point where it can be a challenge to keep up with it.”

Jesica Blake, director of stewardship for the accredited North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, says that when she started in 2002, “We were worried about storage of film and negatives; now we try to keep up with best practices for digital imagery. We’ve gone from clipboards and film cameras to iPads as monitoring tools, with detailed aerial imagery at our fingertips in the field instead of a folded-up survey with notes written in black marker.”

She adds, “We have just started playing with drones, but they are tricky and have not been incorporated into our monitoring procedures yet.”

Some land trusts have started testing the use of drones. “One of our board members is proficient with drones and filming,” says Wendland. “He’s helping us to apply that technology for the future, such as monitoring larger and more remote easements, checking specific violations and conducting ecological monitoring, including counting premigrating Sandhill Cranes in our region.”

Other aerial monitoring includes local companies willing to partner with land trusts. Helen Rogers, stewardship manager for the accredited Lowcountry Land Trust in Charleston, South Carolina, says, “We’ve been fortunate to partner with a local pilot, Jon Engle of Green Eyes Aero, to shoot aerial photography for both the baseline reports and for stewardship. On the stewardship front the photos supplement our on-the-ground monitoring, allowing us to see corners of properties, especially the larger ones, that we may not be able to access on foot. Jon’s motto is that he can fly ‘low and slow,’ which truly gives us another perspective of our protected properties.”

When assessing properties for conservation, Dennis Desmond, land and easement stewardship coordinator for the accredited Mainspring Conservation Trust in Franklin, North Carolina, says, “I’m intrigued by the data and models that are increasingly available to us, such as One North Carolina Naturally’s Biodiversity and Wildlife Habitat Assessment model, the North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan, and North Carolina Natural Heritage Program county inventories. When I started, only one of our six counties had a heritage inventory completed. Now we have data for four of them. Combined with regional models, such as The Nature Conservancy’s (accredited) climate change terrestrial resiliency analysis, this information is helping us to better target our conservation efforts.”

Kevin Thusius, director of land conservation at the accredited Ice Age Trail Alliance in Cross Plains, Wisconsin, notes that technological advances have also made the amount of quality resources available to land trusts easier to access. “The Land Trust Alliance and our statewide association, Gathering Waters, have really provided land trusts with effective ways to communicate and share resources. When I began retroactively preparing 40 or so baseline document reports in 2005, I had only a couple of hard-copy examples to work with. Now I can go to the Alliance’s online Learning Center and find dozens of examples, attend one of the Rally seminars or contact staff at Gathering Waters who are more than willing to lend a hand.”

Trusted Land Stewardship Methods

As exciting as the advances in technology have been in stewardship tools, some tried and-true methods and tools remain in use. Site visits are a basic, i.e., walking the land. And one essential tool for doing that has been in use since about 206 BC. “I still rely on a compass,” says Blake. “And I teach every intern how to use one. All the technology in the world will not help you find your way back to the truck in a 2,000-acre swamp when the battery dies.”

Wendland says he wouldn’t go anywhere without “a good paper map, a waterproof field book, a mechanical pencil, a pocket knife and bear spray.”

“We still have file cabinets!” says Emily Hague, director of land protection and stewardship at the accredited Mohonk Preserve in Gardiner, New York. “But we also scan and back up hard copies of documents.”

Rick Remington, conservation director of the accredited West Wisconsin Land Trust, says he still relies on his intuition, “good, bad or otherwise.”

And Paul Elconin, director of land conservation at the accredited Weantinoge Heritage Land Trust in Kent, Connecticut, says you still have to walk the boundaries, “finding corner pins, stone walls and other witness marks in the field.”

Working with Landowners to Steward Property

“Lemonade, unless you’re in the South, then sweet tea. Sometimes it’s a Coors, unless you’re watching your weight, in which case Coors Light is acceptable.” Connor Coleman, stewardship director at the accredited Aspen Valley Land Trust in Colorado, is describing a basic tip for any stewardship person. “The number one rule of stewardship is always accept the lemonade when offered. The best stewardship happens on the front porch or around the kitchen table, sipping a cold drink.”

He also believes good stewardship is proactive, not reactive. “Time spent with a landowner is always more valuable than time spent walking the land monitoring. I would take a stewardship staff person who can converse and empathize with the landowner over someone with a Ph.D. in any ‘ology’ any day. Land trusts aren’t saving land, landowners are. We are just providing them with the tools to do so.”

Before Hague left Monadnock Conservancy (also accredited) to work for Mohonk Preserve, she says by retooling online communications with help from other staff and consultants, “We developed e-newsletter templates and content for monthly newsletters to the volunteers and quarterly newsletters to the landowners. By having regular communications with these two key groups the land trust provided educational resources and kept them engaged.”

And as always, communications is a two-way street, as Rogers explains, “Our current landowners serve as ambassadors of conservation and help us to grow the vision of strategic protection around the Lowcountry.”

Blake points out the importance of building trust with the next generation of landowners: “I spend a lot of time trying to meet the families of our older landowners so that when they eventually pass the land on, we already have a relationship.”

A key point to landowner outreach, according to Elconin, is that “it reinforces that we are partners and not just monitors. We believe our outreach and relationships will lead to fewer violations, better links to successive landowners, more support and increased conservation. With fee preserves, we are reaching out to neighbors to inform them of our management goals, garner their support for stewardship, enlist their eyes and ears and recruit volunteers. We are also diving into the issue of hazard trees and associated risk management. Being responsive to neighbors’ concerns is important and will build friendships.”

Voicing the bottomline, Coleman says, “Landowner relations are number one. Always. Period.”

Careers in Land Stewardship

Stewardship people have no trouble naming the favorite parts of their jobs. Desmond says for his fee lands work, “I enjoy our Stewardship Volunteer workdays. Working alongside people who share their free time and their can-do attitude to help us accomplish our mission, whether it’s planting trees for a riparian buffer or cleaning up an old farm building, always leaves me feeling good at the end of the day.”

Most people rue their commute to work, but not Coleman: “I live on a conservation property and look out at several others through my window, and as I drive to work I pass by many more. As corny as it sounds, I go to work every day inspired by the work Aspen Valley Land Trust has done and go home encouraged by the commitment of so many landowners.”

And Hague has enjoyed watching changes occur in the broader land conservation movement: “In the 10 years I’ve been closely involved, there’s been a shift in focus from getting bucks and acres toward digging deeper into the hearts and minds of the communities we serve to understand their long-term goals and needs, and get people connected to and inspired by the land into action.”

Christina Soto is editor of Saving Land.

Land Stewardship Resources

• See the collection on remote sensing technology on The Learning Center
• What equipment do stewardship staff prefer? Check out the latest stewardship tools.