For Immediate Release
Contact: Anthony Flint 617-661-3016 x116
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Mark C. Ackelson, president of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and active for years in protecting and restoring prairies, wetlands, streams and woodlands and for creating rail-trails, was appointed to the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for 2008.
In the fellowship, named after Boston attorney Kingsbury Browne (1922-2005), Ackelson will engage in lecturing, writing, and mentoring associated with the Lincoln Institute, a Cambridge based think-tank with a focus on land policy.
“I am proud to be a part of a profession and movement that helps protect the environment while also enriching people’s lives,” Ackelson said. “We talk about land, but really our work is about people and communities that we work with to accomplish our shared goals. I am pleased to have had Kingsbury as one of my many mentors.”
Kingsbury Browne is widely recognized as a founding leader in the conservation movement. In 1980, as a fellow at the Lincoln Institute, Browne first envisioned a network of land conservation trusts, and convened conservation leaders through the Institute, which ultimately led to the formation of the national Land Trust Alliance in 1982. Today more than 37 million acres throughout the United States are conserved through that network of more than 1,700 land trusts operating in every state.
Mark Ackelson joined the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation as one its original staff members in 1980 and has been its president since 1994.The foundation has helped protect nearly 100,000 acres of Iowa's prairies, wetlands, woodlands, watersheds, and trail corridors. He helped found the Mississippi River Blufflands Alliance, Iowa Environmental Council, and the Resource Enhancement and Protection Alliance. He also helped found the Land Trust Alliance, and has served as its chair and recently rejoined its board. He also recently chaired the national Rails-to-Trails Conservancy board.
The Lincoln Institute began the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship in 2006 in association with the Land Trust Alliance www.lta.org and the Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award, bestowed on Ackelson at the group’s National Land Conservation Conference in Denver, Colo. Oct. 3-6, 2007.
The Lincoln Institute www.lincolninst.edu publishes books and reports, holds workshops and seminars and conducts demonstration projects, evaluation and analysis on the use, regulation and taxation of land. Land conservation is a major theme of the Institute’s Department of Planning and Urban Form, chaired by Armando Carbonell.
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