California
Open space district in Santa Cruz County will not be pursued

Colorado
California Gubernatorial candidate preserves piece of land near Telluride

Georgia
Bad economy stalls Cobb County preservation program despite voter approval of $40M in bonds

Massachusetts
Editorial on the Community Preservation Act

Michigan
Article on Detroit’s shrinking population and land use

New Jersey
Township prepares to renew open space tax in November

New York
Editorial on preservation efforts of Erie County suburb

Ohio
Analysis of how much an Ohio city is paying for green space

South Carolina
Editorial and article on possible $5M bond in Dorchester County

And another on the same topic.

Wisconsin
Article on Wisconsin’s new farmland preservation program

Photo: Fred J. Field

What does this little love story from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine have to do with land conservation?  Certainly the connection is tangential, but it is too good a story not to share. 

A few years ago, TPL was involved in a complicated effort to protect Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine.  Since we needed to raise money for the project, and it seemed like a good story, we pitched a Maine-based freelance writer named Stacey Chase to go to Sabbathday and interview the four remaining Shakers in the world.   (Members of the sect, as you may know, do not marry and are sexually abstinent.) 

Chase did interview the Shakers, ended up marrying one of them, and as a result, there are now three remaining Shakers in the world.

My article on the world’s last four Shakers was at first only unusual because it was a rare glimpse into daily life at the Protestant monastic sect’s idyllic hilltop village in rural southern Maine. Never could I have imagined that that story, of all stories, would become the story behind the story of how I met, and eventually married, the long-sought love of my life.

TPL and its many partners successfully completed the project in 2006.  You also may want to read Stacy Chase’s original story on the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village.

Mt. Hood from Chehalem Ridge - Photo: Portland Metro

The best writing in daily papers usually comes from the columnists and the sportswriters, who have license to wax creative in ways that the hard-news reporters, and even the feature writers, do not. 

Occasionally, editorial writers also get a chance to turn a phrase.  Exhibit A for this morning comes from the Portland Oregonian, in an editorial on the recent acquisition of Chehalem Ridge Natural Area by the Metro regional government.  While the piece is signed collectively by the Oregonian Editorial Board, it exhibits a tightness and grace that suggest a single writer. 

It happens that this editorial endorses a TPL project.  But cross my heart and hope to spit, I would have posted it even without a TPL mention, since is so attuned to what we are up to at LandNotes.

Some places are haunted by history and give off sad, solemn vibrations. But the Chehalem Ridge Natural Area, five miles south of Forest Grove, is eerie for almost the opposite reason.

This place echoes with premonitions of joy. Picnicking, hiking, camping? Nothing has been decided yet about how this natural area will be used, but on a sunny day, Oregonians lucky enough to be tramping around up here will be transfixed by the view.

And further along is my favorite part:

Few achievements, recorded in the minutes of a public meeting, last forever. Winds shift, majorities collapse and even a wise decision made by one group of politicians can — and often should — be revisited by the next group in another few years.

But the purchase of a park comes as close to being a timeless decision as public bodies ever make. Chehalem Ridge Natural Area will be recorded on the maps and memories of Portlanders for generations to come.

Read the full editorial here.  And there is more about the project on TPL’s website here and here. 

If anyone knows the name of the scribe who actually penned the editorial, I hope they will let me know.  “The purchase of a park comes as close to being a timeless decision as public bodies ever make.”  Boy, I wish I had written that.

Along the Vermillion River, Minnesota - Photo: Peter Crouser

In 2008, Minnesota voters passed that state’s record-setting $5.5 billion Clean Water, Land and Legacy constitutional amendment–expected to generate approximately $200 million per year over 25 years to protect and restore natural areas, parks, and lands vital to water quality.

Now a long story by Doug Smith in the Outdoors section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune website highlights the concerns of a few Minnesotans that the Legacy program and other public land acquisition programs may be acquiring too much land. 

Each fall, the public lands are tramped by thousands of hunters. The lands also provide prime habitat for non-game wildlife, such as songbirds and swans.

Those public prairies, wetlands and forests also are open for trappers, wildlife watchers, photographers and others who seek wild places. And the lands also prevent erosion and improve water quality . . . .

But increasingly, some legislators, county officials and farm groups are questioning the state’s policy of acquiring lands. Their concerns clash head-on with hunting and other conservation groups, who say land acquisition should remain a key component of wildlife habitat preservation.

The story goes on to recite the arguments being floated against land aquisition.  Buying land for the public takes it off the tax roles (although the piece notes that the state makes payments in lieu of taxes), private landowners shouldn’t have to compete with the public and conservation buyers for parcels, acquisition funding might be better spent on land management. 

But Smith concludes by pointing out that only public lands are open for public recreation, that demand for them will grow as population grows, and that they are vital contributors to the state’s $11 billion travel industry. 

He might have added that Minnesota voters probably knew exactly what they were voting for in 2008.  Certainly that seems to be the sentiment in the comments to the article on the Star Tribune website, which ran heavily in support of more public land.  My favorite, entitled simply “Sing It” reads in its entirety: “This land is your land this land is my land!”

Read the entire story here.

Arizona
Scottsdale may see large bond on November ballot, which includes park funding
Pima County puts off 2010 bond package which likely would have included open space

Arkansas
New amendment creating possible funding for local parks needs better explanation

California
LA County wants portion of oil revenue for its park program
More on California state park issues
State ag protection program is threatened

Colorado
Boulder finds difficulty “going green”
State “clamping down” on conservation tax credits
More on this story

Florida
Alachua County eyes new support for possible November sales tax measure

Idaho
Maintaining Idaho’s parks and trails
More on this story

Michigan
Washtenaw County open space millage up for renewal, brings concerns

Montana
Description of Northern Rockies conservation efforts

New Jersey
Somerset County accomplishes acreage milestone in 2009

New York
Community Preservation Fund transfer tax receipts pick up over last 6 months revenues pick up over last six months of 2009, but are still below total yearly levels for 2008

Ohio
Granville open space levy renewal heads to May ballot

Oregon
November is best bet for Tigard bond

Pennsylvania
Debate continues on severance tax in PA, including local distribution

South Carolina
Will land protection continue once recession ends and development picks up?

Tennessee
Groups push for dedicated conservation funding
More on this story
More on this story

Utah
With funds almost gone Park City puts finishing touches on land deal
More on this story

Virginia
Counties seeking authority to levy meals tax without referendum

CNN Screen Capture

There’s nothing like a cover up to launch a media frenzy—or a campaign!  Right now, all eyes are on TPL’s wrapping of the Hollywood Sign, and Cahunega Peak’s conservation star blazes brightly. But the Save Cahuenga Peak: Home of the Hollywood Sign campaign –like Tinseltown fame–will be brief, and life as we know it will again resume as the dust settles in April.

For TPL, “life as we know it” means saving land that people love best, all across the nation. The peak that is home to the Hollywood Sign will join a host of iconic sites that loom above the landscape and signify place to locals and visitors alike. 

What spot near you says “home” each time you see it?   Use the “Leave a Reply” box to tell us about your iconic landscape.

Photo: Rich Reid

Unless you have been locked in a closet for the last couple of days, you probably know that TPL is involved in a high-profile campaign to protect Cahuenga Peak, which looms behind and to the left of the Hollywood Sign as viewed from downtown Los Angeles.

The sign is an American icon, and the peak is a huge remnant open space in the heart of the Southern California megalopolis.  Due in part to the proliforation of blogs and social media, this project already has attracted more attention than any other in TPL’s history.  The only one that came close was our protection of 100 acres of woods at Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond in the late 1980s.  But that was when “facebook” was a nonsense word and a “tweet” was a noise that a bird makes.

You can check out the campaign website to learn more about the effort.

But our topic of the day is not the campaign itself, but the photo (above) that adorns the front of the official campaign brochure.  TPL’s marketing team has been beavering away for months getting ready for this campaign, our departmental quarters littered with brochures, case statements, pledge forms, bumper stickers, campaign buttons, website designs, post cards, and tee shirts–most of which read “Save Cahuenga Peak.”

But this photo?  The first time I saw it, I thought, “wherezat?”  You have got to hand it to Rich Reid (a photographer whose work I admire) for traipsing around one of the most settled corners of the nation to capture that reservoir masquerading as a mountain lake before nearly unsullied peak.

But isn’t the whole point that Cahuenga Peak is one of the last open places in a sea of development?  I argued strenuously for an image more like this one . . .

Photo: BAU10

. . . but, as is more and more the case these day, I was overuled. 

What do you think?  Beauty shot, or the mountain as jewel but in an urban setting?  To me the second photo better makes the case for why this conservation effort is so important.

The Trust for Public Land’s Center for Land and Water is pleased to share a new tool from the Source Water Collaborative, 23 national organizations–including TPL–united to protect America’s drinking water. 

The “Your Water. Your Decision” tool helps users create a professional-looking guide that highlights a community or state’s specific source-water protection needs.  The tool allows users to customize the guide’s content, cover photos, contacts, and resources.  In addition, organizations can brand the guide by adding a logo and contact information. 

It takes about fifteen minutes to create a guide and download it to a computer’s desktop.

One use for the customized guide is as a conversation-starter with agency and government officials,  describing best practices for source-water protection and pointing them toward people and resources that can help them protect drinking water in their state or community.

Create a customized guide here.

Wet Mountain Valley, Colorado - Photo: Bill Gillette

Almost without fail, TPL research and publishing on the economic benefits of conservation attracts a flurry of media attention.  The most recent example comes from Colorado, where a study released Monday estimates that every $1 Colorado invests in  conservation easements returns $6 to the state in economic benefits in the form of  water-supply protection, flood control, waste treatment, production from farms and ranches, and recreation. Funds invested: $512 million between 1995 and 2008.  Return on investment $3.51 billion.  Pretty good return.

From Business Week:

Jessica Sargent-Michaud, an economist with the national Trust for Public Land, said she used geographic data to group Colorado’s conservation easements into 16 distinct ecosystems. She then assigned the land a per-acre dollar value based on figures used in about 10 published studies and consultations with state agriculture extension agents.

Examples include the premiums people pay to live next to open space, costs of cleaning up polluted water or money spent on recreation and tourism.

The Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts estimates that 1.7 million acres are protected from development by 3,900 easements in the state.  This includes ranch land protected by TPL in the Wet Mountain Valley, above, and elsewhere in Colorado.

TPL’s study last year  showing that New Jersey gains $10 in benefits from every $1 invested in conservation helped convinced the New Jersey legislature to put an ultimately successful conservation funding measure on the ballot.  In this instance, also, there is a political context.  From the Denver Business Journal:

Under current law, taxpayers are allowed to claim a state income-tax credit for donating a conservation easement. The credit is equal to 50 percent of the fair market value of the easement, with a cap of $375,000 per easement.

The conservation tax credits are one of the items on the chopping block as Colorado legislators and Gov. Bill Ritter struggle to cut the state’s budget. A bill introduced in the House on Jan. 22 would cap the amount of tax credits that could be claimed at $26 million a year for three years — 2011, 2012 and 2013 — which would funnel more money into the state’s general fund.

But this would divert a huge conservation investment that is paying the state back many times over.

Other studies and publications on the economic benefits of parks and conservation can be found in the Parks Benefits section of TPL’s website.

National
Article on Conservation Easements

Connecticut
Madison voters approve purchase of airport

Louisiana
Baton Rouge parks considered national model

Massachusetts
The placement of wind turbines on conservation lands

A response to above

And another

Montana
On troubles facing Gallatin County open lands program

New Hampshire
Concord to raid conservation funds to pay down debt

New Jersey
Township nixes open space tax

For third straight year Morris County to cut open space tax

Tinton Falls, too

New York
Editorial on Environmental Protection Fund in NY

State closing on land deals that predate moratorium

Very interesting article on mapping growth on Long Island in the NY Times

New Paltz acquires land with Open Space Institute using 2006 bond funds

Ohio
Licking County looks to restore park funding by going to voters

Tennessee
Conservationists unveil agenda for legislative session, includes restoring conservation funding

Virginia
Successful 2009 for Albermarle County’s easement program