Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award
Awarded to: Mark Ackelson, President, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, Iowa

Mark Ackelson, president of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and active for years in protecting and restoring prairies, wetlands and woodlands, and in creating rail-trails, is the winner of the prestigious Kingsbury Browne Conservation Award.  He is the second recipient of this honor, awarded by the Land Trust Alliance to recognize outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation. 

Ackelson was also named to serve in the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for 2008.  In his role in this fellowship, named after Boston attorney Kingsbury Browne (1922-2005), Ackelson will engage in writing, lecturing, and mentoring associated with the Lincoln Institute, a Cambridge-based think-tank with a focus on land policy. Read full press release.

About the award:  The Alliance presents the annual Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award to an outstanding individual whose vision and creativity have resulted in extraordinary accomplishments for land conservation and the land trust community. The recipient of this award shares the qualities that vividly characterized Kingsbury, including a passion for lifelong learning, a strong belief in community-based action, and a drive to teach and nurture new generations of land conservationists.  

About Kingsbury Browne:  Kingsbury Browne (1922-2005) was one of the founding fathers of the Land Trust Alliance—his wisdom and counsel formed the bedrock of today’s Land Trust Alliance and the land trust community.   In 1980, as a Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Browne first envisioned a national network of land trusts and persuaded the Institute to convene the first-ever gathering of land trust leaders from coast to coast. From that beginning, the Land Trust Alliance was founded in 1982 to lead the growing movement.  His wisdom, wit and patient guidance inspired a generation of land conservationists. Now his values and generous spirit live on in the Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award, including the one-year fellowship at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for writing, research and teaching on a subject related to land conservation.

L-R: Mark Ackelson with Land Trust Alliance President Rand Wentworth receiving the Kingsbury Browne Award.

National Conservation Volunteer of the Year Award
Awarded to: Charles Leach, Farmington Land Trust, Connecticut

Suffering a savage encroachment, and finding that Connecticut’s 1726 law gave no chance of redress, Charlie Leach and the entire Farmington Land Trust board, helped state representatives design and introduce legislation, testified at environment committee hearings, lobbied legislators and collaborated with other environmental groups in the state.  The result was model legislation which prescribes severe penalties for tree-cutting on protected lands and allows land trusts to recover legal fees from encroachers. Though a small land trust, they have become a vigilant and proactive force in the community. Read Charles Leach's remarks.

L-R: Alliance Board Chairman Peter Hausmann with Charlie Leach

National Land Trust Excellence Award
Awarded to: Coalition for Buzzards Bay — Bay Lands Center, Massachusetts

The Bay Lands Center has been instrumental in helping the region’s 10 mostly all-volunteer land trusts to protect over 3,000 acres of land. By establishing strategic partnerships with local land trusts, towns, large private landowners, as well as other regional land trusts and agencies at the federal, state and local levels, it has been able to get results that would not have been possible without the leadership, synergy and momentum that are possible when groups collaborate on a common goal.  Read full press release.

Mark Rasmussen, Coalition Executive Director, accepting award for the Coalition for Buzzards Bay Land Trust.