Some 30 years ago, Boston tax lawyer Kingsbury Browne, a specialist in the use of conservation easements, returned from a tour of the Intermountain West and concluded that leaders of disparate land conservation initiatives needed to be better informed about federal tax policy -- and talk more amongst themselves. He convinced the Lincoln Institute to bring together the organizers of land trusts from across country. From those beginnings, a network first called the Land Trust Exchange was established, which later turned into the Land Trust Alliance -- which later this month at Rally 2012 in Salt Lake City will celebrate 30 years of providing leadership for voluntary private land conservation initiatives to benefit communities and natural systems, representing more than 1,700 land trusts across America.
The Lincoln Institute delegation including Armando Carbonell, Peter Pollock and Jim Levitt will be on hand to continue the conversation on the next big thing in land conservation: the Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation, established at the Lincoln Institute a little over a year ago in quite similar fashion to Kingsbury Browne's initial convening. The network, in partnership with the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy, the Regional Plan Association and others, brings together leaders in conservation efforts that have increased in scale due to climate change and other factors. Levitt, director of the program on conservation innovation at the Harvard Forest, will deliver a talk at TEDxBeaconStreet in November on the use of technology in Large Landscape Conservation.
The annual recipient of the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship and Award will also be announced. The current Kingsbury Browne Fellow is Audrey C. Rust. The story of Kingsbury Browne, the Lincoln Institute, and the Land Trust Alliance is expertly recounted by Armando Carbonell in this special anniversary edition of Saving Land.