Saving the places everyone loves

The Conservation and Diversity Project

Conservation knows no skin color. Saving North Carolina’s natural lands, family farms, lakes and streams, and working forests helps all people, regardless of race or ethnicity.

The Conservation Trust, on behalf of North Carolina’s local land trusts, is leading an exciting and comprehensive new project that aims to include a wider range of people in the land trust movement as staff and board members, as well as among the people we serve.

The goal is to make our impact on North Carolina’s communities more relevant to their needs, and our advocates a better reflection of the state we love.

Marian and Ezra Gilliam worked with the LandTrust for Central North Carolina to protect their 75-acre farm in Rowan County.

The Conservation and Diversity Project has four facets:

• Partnership building: to increase and expand the coalition and build partnerships between North Carolina’s 24 land trusts and local community development corporations. The diversity project also is developing an internship program with North Carolina’s historically black colleges and universities.
• Conservation-based affordable housing: creating neighborhoods that are environmentally friendly but still reasonably priced. Several sites are in pre-development, and new sites are being sought across North Carolina.
• Outreach and education: workshops and other resources to teach land trust leaders how to involve a broader range of citizens in their efforts, while recruiting staff and board membership that better reflects North Carolina’s racial and ethnic makeup.
• Policy development: adjusting existing conservation techniques or creating new policy to increase minority landowners’ ability to keep and protect their property. CTNC is a member of the Heirs Property Retention Coalition, a network of more than 15 national, regional, and state organizations focused on heirs’ property issues.

Partners: The Black Family Land Trust NC Community Development Initiative The Conservation Fund’s Resourceful Communities Program Other grassroots organizations, including North Carolina’s land trusts and local community development corporations.

For more facts and information about diversity in the conservation movement, please visit the Center for Diversity and the Environment.

Contact us for more information on the Conservation and Diversity Project.