Sustainable Land Trust Management
by John S. Adams, CFP®, CIMA® and Jack O’Connor, CFP®, CIMA® The Arbor Group, UBS (Seattle)
Land Trust Funding – Sustainable Investment Management for Parks and Protected Areas
There are currently more than 1,700 Land Trusts including 467 accredited Land Trusts1 in the United States. Chances are good that right now, thousands of nature lovers are out enjoying land trust trails. But have you ever wondered how they are financed? When you are called on to make a donation to support your land trust, or to join the staff or Board, this will help give you some insight into the current and rapidly changing landscape of finance for community protected areas.
In a prior article in GreenMoney, we described how national parks and protected areas in remote parts of the world have attracted permanent financing using endowments. This helps provide income – and sustainable conservation financing for national parks in areas that do not have adequate financial resources. Major donors including governments and conservation organizations have collaborated to fund the “crown jewels of nature”, which helps make sure we can still have jaguars in the forests of Suriname, dolphins in the Caribbean, red pandas in Bhutan and mountain gorillas in the Virunga mountains of Uganda.
In the United States, the Land Trust movement has grown organically. It sprang from the passion and commitment of individuals and communities who decided that some fields and forests, lakes and streams are too precious to risk development. Through a combination of land donation and acquisition, Land Trusts have been used to set aside land for the public and for nature, forever. There are now over 61 million acres under conservation, more land conserved than in all the national parks of the United States combined.
The most common financial needs for land trusts are generally in three categories (see the answer in their article)
Read their complete article, that is very informative, here - https://greenmoney.com/sustainable-land-trust-management
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