Message From the Executive Director

Reaching Out For Conservation

     In October, three of our staff and I traveled to Nashville to attend the Land Trust Rally, the annual national conference for land trust organizations. It’s always inspiring and energizing to be surrounded by like-minded people–nearly 2,000 in fact, a new record for the conference. We learned a lot and returned home even more committed to our land protection efforts in the Upstate.

The central theme of the conference was the importance of the expanded tax incentives for conservation. (See page 8 of this newsletter). Because the new incentives expire at the end of 2007, speaker after speaker, including United States Senator Lamar Alexander, told us to work harder than ever, to contact more landowners, and to protect more land. Senator Alexander said, “Congress will be watching. This time next year we’ll want to know how the incentives worked and how well you all did. That will determine whether the incentives are extended beyond 2007.” In short, now it’s up to us.

Riding back home, we started talking about an action plan for the Upstate. A few days later we had drafted a “Land Trust Outreach Campaign” with the following major elements:

• Reprinting our land trust booklet,
• Updating our “Greenprint,” a computer database of important properties in the region,
• Contacting and following up with approximately 1,000 landowners,
• Sponsoring a conference for attorneys, accountants and financial planners,
  and
• Establishing a committee of volunteers in each Upstate county to support our efforts.

I’m delighted to report that The Graham Foundation recently awarded us a major grant to implement most of these elements of the campaign. So stay tuned–you will see the campaign in high gear in 2007.

We are confident that at next year’s Land Trust Rally, when someone asks us, “Did landowners respond? Should the incentives be extended?” we can answer with a resounding “Yes!”

Best wishes,

Brad Wyche