Endowment Launches Phase I of Conservation Easement Project

The Endowment has engaged Danyelle O’Hara, an independent consultant from Norman, OK, to lead Phase I of a project to determine interest in and parameters necessary to develop a single nation-wide system to track conservation easement information.  “As a nation we have a pretty good handle on where our public lands are.  But, we don’t have the same ability to plan based on knowledge about lands subject to conservation easements,” said Endowment President Carlton Owen.  Public lands, whether National Forests or state parks, typically appear as green blobs on maps.  It is the inability to see the entire “conservation estate” — public lands plus lands subject to conservation easements — that thwarts sound planning and hampers allocation of limited conservation dollars that drives interest in this project.  The Endowment is working with a wide range of partners including three federal agencies — Forest Service, Fish & Wildlife Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service — and leading conservation not-for-profits Ducks Unlimited, Land Trust Alliance and The Nature Conservancy, in this project.  Products from the work will include an assessment of approaches necessary to move forward as well as a plan to address long-term sustainability of such a system.