Co-executive director of Rivers & Lands Conservancy Nicole Padron penned this piece for the Los Angeles Daily News:
Land trusts throughout California work locally and in unison to create a network of protected private lands across the state.
Federal agencies like the US Forest Service manage more than 45% of California’s land. I learned this statistic as an undergrad in college and for this reason I assumed the best career option for me was to become a USFS ecologist, working to restore the unique California habitats I was taught about. What I didn’t learn until several years later is that an estimated 48% of the state is privately owned, and that land trusts play a pivotal role in protecting private lands for their important species and resources.
A land trust is a nonprofit that conserves land by acquiring and stewarding land or through voluntary conservation agreements with landowners to protect their land’s conservation values.