Defenders' Experts
Living Lands Project
Helping land trusts conserve biodiversity
Local land trusts across the United States have done a remarkable job protecting working farm and forest lands, scenic values and natural areas on private lands. The majority of land trusts identify wildlife habitat and thus biodiversity as a core value, but they face numerous barriers to achieving effective on-the-ground biodiversity conservation.
Defenders’ Living Lands Project assists land trusts in making strategic decisions about:
- where to work to conserve high priority native species and habitats, and
- how to use effective land stewardship to restore and manage native habitats for long-term benefit.
The end result is better protection for wildlife and biodiversity and greater support for land trusts through increased funding, community support, and security from litigation.
Read more about the project here
Why Biodiversity?
A focus on biodiversity doesn’t just benefit wildlife; it benefits all of us in the form of cleaner air, water, and a host of other ecological services. A true win-win, land trusts who include biodiversity in their missions have found that they also benefit in a number of unexpected ways.
More about Biodiversity and Land Trusts
Living Lands Newsletter
Latest news
- Rally 2007 Living Lands Presentations
Read and review the presentations from the Living Lands Track of the Land Trust Alliance's National Land Conservation Conference.
Case studies of Land Trusts
Defenders' Living Lands project has compiled a series of 14 case studies profiling the biodiversity-oriented conservation efforts of land trusts around the country. The purpose of the case studies is to highlight creative and innovative approaches to conservation that other land trusts may find useful. Topics covered include habitat restoration, collaborative planning, conservation finance, leveraging volunteers, and creative partnership building. Case studies profile land trusts varying in capacity from all-volunteer to well-staffed working in a diversity of geographic settings.
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