An Academy for Saving the World
Written by Ben Gelderloos, NCRLT’s Acquisitions Coordinator
The transactions that land trusts complete are very niche. They are one-part real estate deal, one-part ecosystem stewardship planning, and another part that is invariably unique to every project. As it follows, the skills and people to carry out land conservation at a land trust are very unique as well.
Since starting at Northern California Regional Land Trust last summer, I have dove into this unique process and am quickly learning many tricks of the trade. A huge part of my learning has been enabled by the California Land Protection Academy. The idea, planned by Sierra Cascade Land Trust Council with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Board, is to bring together all the people who are trying to learn these land transaction skills and train the cohort to be the engines of land conservation in the future. What’s better is I get to be trained by the folks from land trusts across the state who have seen hundreds of these transactions and are verifiable experts. I was honored to be selected as an apprentice under the program last fall and have been engaged since.
When land trusts as a model for land conservation started gaining steam in the 1990s and 2000s, 1 or 2 staff at each land trust learned the niche skills needed to close a transaction for land protection. Now many of those folks are reaching their well-deserved retirement. It feels special to be part of a “handing of the torch” where the massive amounts institutional knowledge can be handed off to a group of excited young professionals eager to take up the reigns. People in my cohort are from the Humboldt coast to the Mohave and all are excited to continue a legacy of protecting land across the state.
The Land Protection Academy (CaLPA) started off for me with a week of in-person training at Blue Oak Ranch and Reserve above San Jose.
This beautiful oak -woodland property run by the University of California system is a place I’m quite familiar with as my partner’s grad school research project has a field site I would come to help out at. I arrived to find a new set of colleagues and friends who were just as taken with the beauty of the place as I was. Something incredible happens when you put a bunch of people with the same interests and abilities together. I once watched a Netflix documentary on flat earthers first organizing a conference and then creating a scientific research wing only to conduct an experiment that proved the earth was indeed a globe. With this group of just slightly less eccentric land trust staff, we immediately began talking about projects and experiences, our motivations and visions, and a shared love of a natural world worth protecting.
CaLPA has been a tool for me to quickly understand how some very complex processes work.
An intensive week of training is a great way to dive in and a rotation of speakers including appraisers, lawyers, and staff from national organizations delivered information straight from the source. The kind of knowledge that comes from 20 years of experience was being delivered directly to me. I left with a full head and notebook and have since been referencing what I learned in that training extensively in my work on NCRLT new and upcoming projects.
Perhaps even more important than raw knowledge is a community for which to ask for help when what you know is not enough. I meet weekly with a small group and a mentor to discuss projects and the roadblocks we hit at our respective land trusts. To not feel alone when things are going sideways and to have to support to figure out what to do is an excellent way to move forward. I am thankful for the help I have gotten both because it has helped advance NCRLT’s projects and because it makes me a more adaptive professional.
While land conservation work is still incredibly niche, the support and community from the CaLPA program has made the land trust world feel a lot larger. I look forward to continuing to grow with my cohort members to continue a strong legacy of protection in California. Plus, I look forward to celebrating with my peers some of the exciting wins coming out of Northern California Regional Land trust for protecting our land and serving the community.
