Results of the December 2004 Survey

The Standards and Practices Program Design Steering Committee thanks everyone who participated in the survey about barriers to their organization’s full implementation of Land Trust Standards and Practices and what they perceive as the biggest threats or challenges to the long-term protection of conserved land. It was distributed in December 2004 and the committee is pleased to share the results. Key results along with survey demographics are summarized below.

SURVEY DATA

• Approximately 5,000 email notices sent on December 2, 2004
• Approximately 1,600 paper mailings sent on December 5, 2004

TOTAL RESPONSE

DEMOGRAPHICS

STATES RESPONDING

• Respondents represented 41 states and regional/national organizations
• Most # of respondents were from California (35) and Massachusetts (34), followed by Maine (25), New York (23), and Pennsylvania (22)
• States not represented are Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Dakota, Nevada, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.  

RESULTS SUMMARY

1. How likely is it that all of the land your organization conserves today will remain protected 100 years from now?

83%     “Highly likely” and “likely”
10%     “Uncertain”
8%        “Not likely.”  

Some of the reasons why all of the land would not continue to be conserved in 100 years included:

• Changing laws, government regulations, and changing legal system
• Legal challenges; cost of legal challenges; court decisions
• Eminent Domain/Condemnation
• Lack of Capacity to monitor and steward, or difficulty in enforcing and defending easements
• Land trust goes bankrupt/permanence of land trust
• Changes in organization, stability of organization, lack of (experienced) human resources
• Changes in property ownership or problems with secondary or later easement holders
• Changing political, social, and economic conditions/attitudes
• Loopholes in easements, poorly written easements, older easements
• Changes in land use or surrounding land use; zoning changes, development pressure (population growth)
• Rising costs of land

2.   What do you think are the biggest challenges or threats to the long-term protection of conserved land across the country from factors external to your land trust?   Please rank your responses, with 1 being the biggest threat, 2 being the second biggest threat, and so on.

The highest ranked threat in general was “court decisions setting adverse legal precedents to conservation easements.”   Interestingly, data isolated from staff members identified “conversion of land around protected properties/condemnation of conserved land” as a greater challenge.   The tables in the full data show this number of respondents in each area.

Top three responses:

• Court decisions setting adverse legal precedent to conservation easements.
• Conversion of land around protected properties.
• Loss of tax incentives for conservation.

Other responses included:

• Changing attitudes toward land conservation.
• Climate change and other environmental impacts.
• Eminent domain.

3.   What do you think are the biggest challenges or threats to the long-term protections of conserved land across the country from factors that will come from within the land trust community?   Please rank your responses, with 1 being the biggest threat, 2 the second biggest threat, and so on.

The top three threats included:

• Land trusts will not be able to defend conservation easements.
• Land trusts with protected property will go out of business or cease to operate.
• Land trusts will not be able to complete required stewardship.

There was little difference between board or staff member responses.

Open-ended responses included concerns about:

• Rogue land trusts/ethical concerns/loss of credibility.
• Financial stability/lack of volunteers/long-term viability.
• Problems with Board, Staff Land Trust management.

4. Please indicate your response to the following statement: “Demonstrated implementation of Land Trust Standards and Practices by your land trust and by land trusts across the nation can help minimize the threats to permanent land conservation.”

334      Agreed
17         Disagreed

This was pretty much consistent whether board or staff.  

4A .   If you answered “disagree,” why do you think that demonstrated implementation of Land Trust Standards and Practices will not help to minimize the threats to permanent land conservation?

Some respondents who disagreed were worried that S&P compliance does not directly translate into more land conserved; others were worried that “rogue” land trusts capture the media attention much more than those land trusts demonstrating implementation of S&P, and some others considered parts of S&P unnecessary.  

5.   What types of barriers has your organization faced in implementing Land Trust Standards and Practices?   Please check all that apply.

Overall, the primary barrier selected was “other” and an open-ended response was written.   However, this is misleading: 29% of the respondents who selected “other” reported NO barriers and many expressed great support for S&P.   Also, many of the “other” responses could conceivably go into existing categories.

Disregarding the “other” category,” the largest barrier selected overall was “board members not able to devote enough time to S&P implementation,” followed by “staff (if any) is not able to devote time to S&P implementation.”   Of responses from staff members, they ranked ““staff (if any) is not able to devote time to S&P implementation,” and board members ranked “board members not able to devote enough time to S&P implementation” highest.  

6.   Please indicate your response to the following statement by checking all that apply.   “Having a publicly-recognized symbol or ‘seal’ that designates land trusts that have achieved various levels of implementation of Land Trust Standards and Practices would be: (total responses indicated below)

Similar to Question 5, this question allowed more than one response.

74%     “Valuable for the land trust community” and “Of interest to my organization”
19%     “I need more information before answering.”  
7%        “Not valuable to the land trust community” and/or “not of interest to my organization.”

Of board members, 23% wanted more information before answering.   

6A. If this is of interest to your organization, what type of recognition and/or incentives would you like to have linked to the ‘seal’?

Recognition by the IRS and state, local and federal governments is important, as is recognition by grant makers and other funders.   Incentives listed included:

• Seal would give land trust legitimacy and sign of commitment to conservation and ethical practices
• Opportunities and priority for funding from grant makers, Land Trust Alliance, and others
• Discounts on Land Trust Alliance training, insurance and other professional services
• Acknowledgment and ability to use seal on letterhead   and other documents

Other open-ended responses expressed concern about or support for accreditation, and offered ideas for program design.  

7.   Please indicate how important it is to include the following aspects in the Land Trust Standards and Practices implementation program design:

“Is affordable” was the number-one “Must Include.”  
Next was “Is designed and led by the land trust community.”
Followed by “Multiple levels for land trusts of different sizes.”  

Board members and staff both answered consistently for the “Must Include” category.   Lots of other suggestions were offered, including sliding scale fees, scholarships, training is broadly available, relevance to local issues, and peer-supported.    

8.   Do you have any other comments about the design of new programs to help land trusts implement Land Trust Standards and Practices that you would like to share with the Steering Committee?

This section invited open-ended responses.   146 people took the opportunity to leave additional comments and remarks, which were organized into the following categories: Recognition; Incentives; Clarity and Simplicity; Concerns Of/For Small Land Trusts; Accommodating Diversity; Agencies; Miscellaneous.

9.   Please complete the following information so that we can better tailor our programs.  

This section collected basic demographic information.

updated 2/24/05