The Trust for Public Land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a land conservation nonprofit founded in 1972 and based in San Francisco, California in the United States. TPL works throughout the United States to conserve land for people as parks, gardens, and other natural places.
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[edit] TPL Conservation Initiatives
TPL conserves land across all types of landscapes. Its five initiative areas are:
- Parks for People: TPL works in cities and suburbs across America to ensure that everyone—in particular, every child—enjoys close-to-home access to a park, playground, or natural area.
- Working Lands: TPL protects farms, ranches, and forests that support land-based livelihoods and rural ways of life.
- Natural Lands: TPL conserves places of natural beauty that preserve wilderness for our children's children to explore and that support other species with whom we share the planet.
- Heritage Lands: TPL protects places of historic and cultural importance that keep us in touch with the past and who we are as a people.
- Land & Water: TPL preserves lands that protect clean water and the natural beauty of our coasts and waterways.
[edit] TPL Conservation Services
The conservation of land may involve more than real estate expertise. For example, TPL offers these services:
- Conservation Vision: TPL helps communities analyze park needs and land conservation priorities. TPL's Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, known as Greenprinting, targets lands that are strong candidates for conservation and helps establish local land conservation goals.
- Conservation Finance: TPL helps design and promote public funding programs that support land conservation. TPL helps states, counties, and municipalities, create and pass legislation and mount ballot measures that generate new funds for conservation.
- Conservation Transactions: TPL helps structure, negotiate, and complete land transactions that create parks, playgrounds, and protected natural areas. TPL serves as an independent agent, buying land from willing landowners and then transferring it to public agencies, land trusts, or other groups for protection. In some instances, TPL will protect land through conservation easements, which restrict development but permit traditional uses such as farming and ranching.
- Conservation Research and Education: TPL acquires and shares knowledge of conservation issues and techniques to improve the practice of conservation, promote its public benefits, and to encourage proconservation public policy.
[edit] Statistics
Since 1972, TPL has
- completed more than 3,500 land conservation projects
- in 46 states
- protecting more than 2 million acres (8000 km²).
Since 1994, TPL has helped states and communities craft and pass
- more than 330 ballot measures
- generating over $24 billion in new conservation-related funding.
[edit] Publications
TPL produces may resources to support land conservation including,
- The Conservation Easement Handbook: A definitive resource for land conservation professionals developing a conservation easement program to meet local acquisition needs.
- Conservation Finance Handbook: For communities seeking to raise conservation funds at the ballot box--from initial demographic research to post election analysis. Topics include: Measuring Public Opinion, Designing a Winning Measure, and Running a Conservation Campaign.
- Source Protection Handbook: The handbook provides resources to help a community both make the case for land conservation and also go about actually conserving those lands.
[edit] Research Centers
- TPL's Center for City Park Excellence: Urban parks are critical components for redeveloping and reshaping the nation's cities. TPL is carrying out significant research to support the nationwide city park promotion efforts of public officials and private citizens.
- TPL's Center for Conservation Finance: Conducts and publishes research on an array of funding topics and provides insights into emerging trends in land conservation.
- LandVote: Database of in-depth research on conservation ballot measures since 1988.
- The Conservation Almanac: online source of information on the status of land conservation in thirteen western states.
- Center for Land & Water: Learn more about the relationship between land conservation and water quality, identify tools and resources for watershed protection, and discover how land conservation is being used throughout the United States to protect water quality.
[edit] Land&People Magazine
Land&People, TPL's national magazine, is available for free.
