Land Conservation and the Public Trust

Written with support from the Land Trust Alliance, this report brought together distinct voices to argue for more inclusive conservation. The Land Trust Alliance recognizes that land trusts share a destiny with the communities in which they work and that more must be done to understand and respond to the needs and aspirations of those communities. The United States of America that is emerging right now is very different from the USA of the 1980s when the majority of land trusts were formed. How will land trusts choose to relate with their changing communities? What can be learned about land and conservation from so many new perspectives? What will define the relationship between land trusts and community? All successful long-lived social, political and economic movements have required re-invention—it is part of innovation. How will land trusts innovate in the next 25 years as they have in the past 25 years? These questions are all addressed in this report by Center for Whole Communities.