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Strategic Conservation

What land is most important to protect?

You can’t protect everything. No land trust can do as much outreach, as much conservation or as much stewardship as it would take to protect all of the land worth protecting in its service area. So, how do you decide where to focus your efforts?

That takes planning. A strategic conservation plan can help your land trust identify the most valuable resources to protect. It can also help you think about conservation on a larger scale. Rather than taking a scattershot approach, how can you link protected lands to make a difference for a whole landscape, community, watershed, or ecosystem? Planning may also reveal opportunities for partnerships that can expand your impact.  

With a strategic conservation plan, you may be able to protect more land, because you’re more focused and proactive. The National Land Trust Census shows that land trusts with a strategic conservation plan save twice as much land, on average, as land trusts without one.  

In the course book Strategic Conservation Planning, Ole Amundsen points out, “Land trusts that focus on strategic priorities and create conservation visions typically raise more funds and protect more land more efficiently than those who jump at any opportunity without an overarching plan.”

How to create a strategic conservation plan

It takes time and effort to create a strategic conservation plan — but ultimately, it should result in more effective and impactful land conservation. You can find extensive resources in The Learning Center to assist you in creating your plan. The process usually involves these steps:

  • Review your mission.
  • Establish your land conservation goals.
  • Identify and map resources that you want to protect.
  • Assess threats to those resources.
  • Analyze this information and use it to designate focus areas.
  • Research land ownership in your focus areas.
  • Develop strategies for outreach to these landowners.
  • Consider potential partnerships to help achieve your goals.
  • Develop an action plan.
  • Decide how to evaluate your progress.
  • Adopt the plan, by a vote of the full board.
  • Implement your plan!

Resources and Tools

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Articles

Protecting Land Through Conservation Development: Lessons from Land Trust Experience

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Summer 2014
Author: 
Jennifer Anderson

Around for about 40 years, conservation development projects that combine real-estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources—is not new. But how prevalent is it? From October 2007 through April 2010, Jeffrey Milder, then a researcher at Cornell University, and Story Clark, a conservation finance expert, decided to find out.

Articles

The Benefits of Strategic Land Conservation Planning

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Winter 2009
Author: 
Kendall Slee

In the 264 square miles of western Penobscot Bay, Maine, where the Coastal Mountains Land Trust works, there are scenic vistas, waterways, farmland, woods and coastline aplenty to tug at conservationists’ heartstrings. But the land trust’s focus is laser-sharp. It has delineated six focus areas — just over 11 square miles of its service area — as the places it will spend its time, money and other resources protecting.

Articles

Better Together: Land Trusts Win by Collaborating

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Winter 2011
Author: 
Edith Pepper Goltra

When land trusts band together, good things happen.

Articles

Managing Mergers: How to Combine Forces to Boost Finances and Capacity

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Winter 2011
Author: 
Jennifer Anderson

In the years leading up to Fox Valley Land Foundation’s merger with The Conservation Foundation, founding board member June Keibler was in the office five days a week.

Articles

Conservation in a Broader Context: Land Trusts and Land Use Planning

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Winter 2013
Author: 
Ole Amundsen III and Susan Culp

Land trusts are making great strides in strategic conservation planning, but conservation efforts do not occur in a vacuum.

Articles

Putting Their Heads Together

Source: 
Saving Land magazine, Winter 2014
Author: 
Edith Pepper Goltra

What can small land trusts offer large, regional land trusts that have been around for years, have large staffs and are protecting thousands of acres? As it turns out, quite a lot.

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