Top Ten Land Trust Alliance Achievements
The Land Trust Alliance is the voice of the land trust community. As the national leader in policy, standards and education, we work passionately to build support for conservation, defend conservation and strengthen land trusts so they can conserve and steward more land now and for future generations.
Top Ten Alliance Achievements
- Defense of Easement Tax Deduction: In 2005, the Alliance rallied the land trust community to successfully fight the proposed elimination of the federal tax deduction for conservation easements donations. Ultimately, the deduction was increased in subsequent years, rather than eliminated.
- Enhanced Tax Incentive: In 2015, Congress enacted one of the most significant conservation measures in decades: the enhanced federal tax incentive for conservation easement donations, the culmination of years of advocacy led by the Land Trust Alliance. The permanent conservation easement tax incentive is a powerful tool that helps Americans conserve their land voluntarily. For land trusts, the permanent incentive represents increased opportunities to protect special places.
- Community Conservation Program: In 2013, the Alliance launched a new program to address inequities regarding access to land; open space and a healthy environment; to increase financial and political resources for land conservation to ensure conservation permanence; and to make land trusts more reliant on and enriched by the communities they serve.
- Grants to Land Trusts: Over the last 20 years, the Land Trust Alliance has provided $33 million in direct grants to land trusts and other conservation organizations for organizational and leadership development, community conservation and innovative conservation projects.
- Farm Bill: The last Farm Bill was a big win for conservation thanks, in part, to the efforts of the Land Trust Alliance which brought together land trusts from across the country to advocate on behalf of programs important to them. It provides billions of dollars for a suite of conservation programs, including almost $1 billion over 10 years for conservation easements. By far the largest source of federal funding for land conservation, the Farm Bill supports conservation easements on farm and ranch land, grasslands, wetlands, and forests. It also funds conservation partnerships and sustainable land management practices. Now the Alliance is working hard to ensure the 2018 Farm Bill (along with other federal priorities like the Land and Water Conservation Fund) includes full funding for conservation.
- Terrafirma: In 2011, the Land Trust Alliance created the first-ever insurance program for land conservation. Land trust members that are eligible for Terrafirma have access to a one-of-a-kind insurance program to offset the costs of legal action to defend their conservation easements and fee-owned land.
- Conservation Defense Fund: The Alliance is committed to making sure that land trusts win every precedent-setting case, so it set up a Conservation Defense Fund to provide financial backup for the legal battles that are most important for the land trust community to win.
- Land Trust Standards and Practices: The land trust community is committed to excellence in our work and to upholding the public’s confidence in land conservation. Together, the Alliance and land trusts established these guidelines, originally introduced in 1989 and revised most recently in 2016-2017, that describe how to operate a land trust legally, ethically and in the public interest, with a sound program of land transactions and land stewardship. Adopting the Standards is a membership requirement, and all Alliance land trust members have done so.
- Accreditation: In 2007, the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, an independent program of the Alliance, began accrediting land trusts. Ten years later, there are 397 accredited land trusts that have conserved almost 80 percent of all land under conservation easement or owned in fee by land trusts, ensuring the promise of perpetuity.
- 31 Years of Rally: The Alliance convened its 31st Rally in 2018, the foremost training and networking conference for land conservationists. Rally is just one of the Alliance’s educational offerings, which also include webinars, publications and the Learning Center, our premier educational website for land trusts.
Do you have questions about land trust membership? Call 202-347-7475 or email membership@lta.org.
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