Keith Ross, Senior Advisor at LandVest, was invited to work with members of Congress and other national leaders of conservation toward a vision for large-scale conservation initiatives. On the 100th anniversary of the Act authorizing the National Forests in the eastern United States, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy brought together one hundred major players in the conservation world to discuss the Future of Large Landscape Scale Conservation in America.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey provided the participants with an insider’s view of Congressional action on Land and Water Conservation. Panels of administration officials, non-profit and private philanthropy, as well as university researchers and private landowners provided a variety of practical applications for the audience to discuss in an extended discussion session.
Participants were asked the following question: “Given the United States’ remarkable history of public, private and non-profit land conservation to build on, twenty-first century Americans now face a grand challenge: how do we achieve durable, measurable land and biodiversity conservation objectives at a large, landscape scale, protecting our natural heritage and enhancing ecosystem services across property boundaries, sectoral divisions and even international borders?”
LandVest was recognized for its past work with the first and largest landscape scale conservation easement in the United States, the Pingree Forest Partnership, over 762,000 acres of Maine forest, as well as for its groundbreaking new work in developing new methods of increasing the pace of conservation on private lands through their Aggregation projects with the New England Forestry Foundation and Harvard Forest in support of the recently released report Wildlands and Woodlands, A Vision for the Forests of New England. Seeking cost effective solutions for reduced costs of conservation transactions through cooperative rather than competitive collaboration among land trusts is a primary goal of LandVest’s Aggregation work, along with developing new sources of funding to assist private landowners in monetizing ecosystem services of these lands.
LandVest Real Estate Consulting works with landowners, both public and private, assisting in the analysis development of land use plans to support landowners financial as well and their conservation goals. Recent examples of this work can be found on the LandVest website. For more information or to discuss the meeting in greater detail contact Keith Ross at kross@landvest.com.
