Communities

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Sanctuary Forest was founded in 1987 to protect Big Red, a 2,000-year-old redwood tree in Northern California’s Mattole River watershed. “We started with 11 people, since it took 11 of us to join hands and stand around this one particular tree,” says executive director […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. In 1990, the McDowell-Sonoran Land Trust was founded to protect a 36,000-acre, billion-dollar chunk of private and state land near the affluent community of Scottsdale, Ariz. “We realized we weren’t going to raise that money selling T-shirts, so we went to the city,” says […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust is the first land trust founded by agricultural producers. Jay Fetcher, a rancher in Colorado’s Yampa Valley, hit on the idea of a cattlemen’s land trust when he and his family put an easement on their land in […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Five Valleys Land Trust in Missoula, Mont., was founded 27 years ago to protect the area’s river corridors. The group has since broadened its mission, and has protected over 15,000 acres with easements or acquisitions.Recently, the trust purchased 1,000 acres of land on […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Utah Open Lands is a statewide group that holds about 18,000 acres in conservation easements. In 10 years, it’s grown far beyond the expectations of executive director Wendy Fisher, who helped start the group in Park City when she was finishing her senior year […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. On their way to Steamboat Springs, Colo., skiers and snowboarders from Denver skirt the open, snow-covered pastures of the Yampa River Valley. Snowhounds who enjoy those condo-free vistas can now help preserve them – by chowing down on hamburgers after a day on the […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. The Jefferson Land Trust, based in Port Townsend, Wash., is a 10-year-old land trust on the Olympic Peninsula with 1,140 acres in conservation easements. In 1996, the trust also acquired the 130-acre Janis Bulis Forest Preserve, donated by Bulis’ widow, Erika Bulis, who continues […]

Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When land-trust staffers get together, they can sometimes sound more like a group of real estate lawyers than environmental advocates. The deals they broker are complicated, but they use a few basic tools over and over again. A conservation easement is a legal agreement […]