Standards
and Practices Program Design Steering Committee
Case Statement
for Advancing Implementation of Land Trust Standards and Practices
I. Will the Lands We Protect Today Remain Protected Tomorrow?
Events
of recent years have underscored that conserving land in
perpetuity is a complicated business. As undeveloped land
becomes scarcer, there will be increasing pressure
to convert conservation land to other uses. As easements
are challenged in court, adverse rulings could undermine
their viability as a conservation tool. Building sustainable
organizations to steward land and easements well into the
future is both essential and challenging. The land trust
community must commit to build a secure foundation for
future conservation by focusing on the strength of our
organizations and the quality of the work we do each day.
Only by ensuring that our easement and land stewardship
work is undertaken according to high standards can we guarantee
that our conservation work will endure over time.
II. The Possibility
of Serious Damage to Land Trusts and Our Work
Society has provided us with powerful tools
to protect land – tools essential to our work. These
tools include federal and state tax incentives, tax-exempt
status for our organizations, and public funding. But what
the public has provided, it can also withdraw.
As land trusts’ conservation work has
grown in scale and become more visible, political and media
scrutiny of land trusts and our work has increased. In the
past year, national newspapers have run front-page stories
on perceived unethical conservation practices. The Senate
Finance Committee launched an investigation and promises reform
legislation in 2005. At the same time, the IRS announced closer
scrutiny of certain conservation transactions. Unless the
land trust community acts quickly to reassure Congress that
it is committed to strong ethical practices and sustainable
organizations, the Congress and the IRS may react with burdensome
regulations.
This focus on abuses by a few endangers the
public’s trust in every one of us and in the tools we
use. It exposes us to actions by regulators and public funders
that could threaten the ability of all land trusts to continue
our work.
III. Keeping Our
Promises
Land trusts
make two promises that must not be broken. To the landowners
who have granted us easements and property, we have promised
that we will preserve and protect their lands far into the
future. To the public, we have promised that our conservation
work will yield important and permanent public benefits. These
are critical promises to keep. The challenge we face is how
to best equip land trusts to keep those promises and how to
demonstrate to the public that we are keeping them.
IV. A Shift to
Stewardship Thinking
Early on, the land conservation community
focused its efforts on starting new land trusts and acquiring
land and conservation easements. We now need to acknowledge
and broaden our focus to create the capacity to be the long-term
stewards of these conservation lands while still successfully
expanding our land protection efforts. The shift to stewardship
must include ensuring the longevity of our organizations,
monitoring and defending conservation easements, being exemplary
stewards of the land, and building relationships with landowners
and our communities. Our commitment to stewardship must be
well understood by the public so that we retain and expand
their confidence in and support of land conservation.
V. Tools for Success:
Implementing Land Trust Standards and Practices
To sustain our conservation work, every land
trust must commit to high and achievable standards. Implementation
of these standards by putting them into practice at our land
trusts will contribute to public confidence, permanence, and
financial support for our missions. Without a commitment to
upholding reasonable standards by land trusts across the country,
we will undermine the achievements the land trust community
has made over the past decades and jeopardize the future of
our work.
The Land Trust Alliance’s newly revised
Land Trust Standards and Practices (S&P) are
a critical tool for meeting the challenges described above
and forming a strong foundation on which to build successful
and effective land trusts. They also will serve as the blueprint
for building training and credentialing programs that enable
all land trusts to make progress in implementing standards
and that recognize those land trusts that achieve increasing
levels of successful implementation.
The Land Trust Alliance cannot accomplish
this alone. Advancing implementation of Land Trust Standards
and Practices will require the active engagement of land
trust leaders and the united will of land trusts across the
country in cooperation with state and regional land trust
service organizations, training contractors, nonprofit support
centers, Land Trust Alliance and others.
VI. Program Design
Principles
In designing training, credentialing and
recognition programs, the Steering Committee will reflect
the needs of land trusts of all sizes and focus on programs
that are voluntary and open to all organizations that choose
to participate. The committee also will consider whether adherence
to some minimum standards should be expected of land trusts.
New programs will be designed to be cost-effective and coupled
with tools to help achieve and sustain success, such as training
and technical assistance. The Steering Committee will listen
to the needs and concerns of land trusts through surveys,
discussion sessions at regional conferences and personal meetings.
(posted 12/1/04)
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