Our land trusts protect more than 193,000 acres with more than 560 conservation easements.
About Us
Georgia Land Trust, Inc., Alabama Land Trust, Inc., and founding organization The Chattowah Open Land Trust, Inc. are non-profit 501(c)(3) conservation organizations dedicated to protecting land for present and future generations, primarily by helping private landowners establish conservation easements on family and investment lands. The land trusts permanently safeguard more than 193,000 acres of land with more than 560 conservation easements, thereby protecting more private land than any other regional conservation group in the southeast.
Conservation easement defined: A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner (easement donor) and a qualified conservation organization or public entity (easement holder) in which the owner voluntarily agrees to restrict the type and amount of development that can occur on the land. A conservation easement allows the landowner to preserve the property’s conservation and historic values by keeping it in an undeveloped state and allowing for preservation of traditional land use patterns. At the same time, the landowner continues to maintain ownership of the property, retains the right to use the property for profit and recreation and retains the right to convey (sell, deed, gift) the property to another. The conservation easement donation can reduce estate, income and property taxes for the landowner.
Mission And Strategic Plan:
Georgia Land Trust, Inc., Alabama Land Trust, Inc., and founding organization The Chattowah Open Land Trust, Inc., have a mission of “protecting land for present and future generations.”
We achieve that mission — protecting more than 172,000 acres mainly in Georgia and Alabama – by helping private landowners protect their land with conservation easements and holding monitoring those easements in perpetuity.
Organizationally, we have been responding to the loss of landscapes and the need for land and watershed conservation for more fifteen years. We have always had focus areas-working lands, riparian corridors, lands linking other protected lands. In 2006, through a facilitated process, we created an explicitly stated strategic plan to guide our efforts in those focus areas.
The plan was intended to guide our activities through 2011. Its principal goals were to achieve a target acreage of 125,000 acres by the end of 2010 and to become known as the land trust of choice for landowners. Having passed 125,000 acres in 2009 and more than 172,000 in 2010, in large measure because of the network of referrals we receive from landowners with whom we have worked, we are now working on a new strategic guide to provide a framework for our activities in 2011 and beyond.
We will continue our work on our traditional focus areas and work to evolve successful strategies to deal with such evolving issues as ensuring permanency in our land protection, providing continued high levels of monitoring and stewardship, and working to create a stable funding source for our operations.
