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104 North Laurel,
Suite 104
Port Angeles, WA 98362
Phone (360) 417-1815
Fax: (360) 457-1089
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Join us as we begin prepare our 100-Year Conservation Vision (Excerpt)

North Olympic Land Trust has had great success over the last 18 years working with willing landowners to protect Clallam County’s significant ecological resources, locally important agricultural economies and culturally rich landscapes. We accomplish our work primarily through conservation easements, legal agreements that eliminate much of a property’s development potential which are upheld in perpetuity. In some cases, the Land Trust will acquire or accept donations of land...

With a service area encompassing 2,670 square miles of land and water, you may wonder how we go about selecting important land conservation projects. Like the wildlife we aim to protect, we thrive on opportunity. We respond first to requests for conservation easements from individual landowners, and then evaluate the property and its conservation values using our established criteria and ranking system. The outcome of this approach speaks volumes about the generosity and conservation ethic of local landowners we’ve worked with over the years; their collective legacy totals over 1,400 acres of precious land, protected forever for the benefit of all species.

Despite these successes, the opportunistic approach has its drawbacks. Conservation easement properties are mostly scattered across the county.  Fragmentation is already a problem on the Olympic Peninsula. Protected lands will resemble isolated islands unless we become more proactive about creating larger, contiguous tracts that provide superior ecological benefits. Large scale conservation is beginning to happen in the lower Dungeness through partnerships with private landowners, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ducks Unlimited, Friends of the Fields, PCC Farmland Trust, and North Olympic Land Trust. This kind of collaboration demonstrates how landscape scale projects can also happen in other areas if there is a common vision and the right momentum.

This has prompted North Olympic Land Trust to begin a process in that identifies, prioritizes, pursues and protects those specific tracts of land that will that will most effectively achieve our mission and conservation objectives. This process, adopted by land trusts nationwide, is called Strategic Conservation Planning. How wonderful it would be if the Land Trust had the staff and financial resources to protect all the wild and rural places in Clallam County. The reality, like most nonprofits, is limited capacity so I believe we have an ethical obligation to protect the best first. Conservation planning will help us develop criteria to determine what lands are the “best”. 

If you are interested volunteering your time to help the Land Trust with its strategic conservation planning, please contact Allison Lutz, Conservation Director, at 417-1815 or allison@nolt.org.  [Read the entire article:]