Description
The Land Trust Alliance (the Alliance) has requested a $30,000 single source grant from the USFWS ¿ Division of Realty (the Division) for educational purposes. With a growing focus on collaborative conservation and partnerships, the Alliance will enhance the ability of private conservation partners to work with the Division to complete its mission in a cost-effective manner, particularly in a time when federal land acquisition funds are dropping. The Land Trust Alliance promotes voluntary private land conservation to benefit communities and natural systems, and represents more than 1,700 land trusts across America. The Alliance¿s mission -- saving the places people love by strengthening land conservation across America -- complements and often directly benefits the National Wildlife Refuge System. In Fiscal Year 2012, despite falling conservation budgets, nearly half the land that the Fish and Wildlife Service acquired was donated, in both fee and easement, by private partners. Working with land trust partners significantly helped the Division to achieve those results. The Alliance provides its non-governmental members, as well as local, state and federal government partners, invaluable advice on all topics concerning voluntary land conservation. To that end, the funding being requested is intended for the Alliance to ensure that its members are educated on how to work directly with the USFWS ¿ Division of Realty, with a particular emphasis on working with the National Wildlife Refuge System, to conserve land within the System¿s boundaries. In effect, the Alliance is directly and indirectly teaching land trusts how to donate land to the National Wildlife Refuge System. The Alliance will use these funds primarily for education. Our goal is to ensure that land trusts have the skills to be effective land acquisition partners. The Alliance will offer a number of educational and training opportunities to land trust staffs, boards and volunteers to help land trusts become better informed about land conservation issues and more effective at conserving land. Land Trust Standards and Practices, the ethical and technical guidelines for the responsible operation of a land trust are a core component of the educational offerings. To ensure that land trusts have the skills to be effective land acquisition partners, among the topics addressed will be conservation finance strategies, project due diligence, protecting land for biodiversity, and protecting water resources through strategic conservation planning. While a registration fee is usually required for training activities, many of the trainings that the Alliance offers are subsidized by grants so that the trainings are affordable, or free, for members of the land trust community. In addition, the Alliance will engage partners, including federal agencies, to share information with land trusts about how to work effectively with a variety of programs, initiatives and funding sources. For example, workshops offered in the course of a year will include ¿The Land and Water Conservation Fund: Strategic Shifts and Interagency Collaboration to Support National Landscape Initiatives¿ and ¿The National Wildlife Refuge System; Partnering with Land Trusts and Local Governments.¿ The Alliance¿s website (http://www.landtrustalliance.org) provides descriptions of the various on-line and in-person training opportunities for land trusts. These include advanced legal training, state, regional and national in-person trainings, standards and practices curricula, and a host of webinars. The $30,000 requested will be used to pay five trainers for five full day sessions at $1,000 each for a total of $5,000, and 10 trainers for 10 half-day sessions or webinars at $500 each for a total of $5,000. The trainers will be offering courses to the land trust professionals and volunteers who will assist land trusts in learning how to donate land to the Division. The remaining funds will be used to pay the education staff at the Alliance who supervise the workshops and trainings. They are the Director of Education at 123 hours for $11,000 and the Training and Conferences Manager at 150 hours for $9,000 The Alliance also convenes a Federal Partners working group several times per year. The Alliance¿s Federal Partners working group meets on a regular basis to discuss topics of mutual interest to the various participants, including how to work with land trusts. The working group was established to encourage the discussion of land conservation issues across federal department lines. Many departments engage in land conservation in one way or another but do not have an opportunity to share what they have learned about land conservation from their experience with other federal agencies except in this forum.