Many of you reading this blog have volunteered at Shirley Heinze Land Trust preserves, have walked our trails, or have attended our events, without knowing much about what we are and what we do. This post is for you!
As our name suggests, Shirley Heinze is a land trust. Land trusts are not-for-profit organizations formed to conserve and steward land permanently. By conserve, we mean that land owned by a land trust, or that is subject to a conservation easement granted to a land trust, generally cannot be developed and is restricted in perpetuity to uses that protect conservation values such as habitat, farmland scenic views, or water quality. And by steward, we mean making good on a promise to care for the land forever. This includes annual monitoring of property, in some cases restoring land to its natural state, and in others serving as a resource on land management issues.
There are about 1,300 land trusts across the country that are backed by 234,000 volunteers and roughly 6.4 million supporters. As a whole, land trusts welcomed 16.7 million visitors in 2020 alone. Within the state of Indiana, Shirley Heinze is one of 22 active land trusts. We currently own and protect over 4,000 acres of property in a six-county region of Northwest Indiana consisting of Lake, Porter, La Porte, St. Joseph, Starke, and Marshall counties. Our stated mission is to preserve and restore natural lands and waters in northwestern Indiana and to engage people in nature and conservation.
Many land trusts, including Shirley Heinze and 15 others in Indiana, are members of a national organization called the Land Trust Alliance. LTA provides education, resources, and advocacy for land trusts and sets best practices for how they are run. Land rusts willing and able to meet rigorous national standards for ethical, legal, and technically-sound land conservation practices may apply for accreditation through an independent program of LTA called the Land Trust Accreditation Commission. Organizations typically spend several years preparing their initial application for accreditation, and once accredited, must go through a re-accreditation process every five years to maintain their designation. Shirley Heinze is one of just four LTA-accredited land trusts in the state of Indiana. We first attained that credential in 2017, and we were re-accredited in 2022.
Shirley Heinze is also a member of Indiana Land Protection Alliance, or ILPA. ILPA advocates for its members and for the cause of conservation at the state level, and it works to build the organizational and financial capacity of land trusts throughout the state to increase their impact and long-term sustainability. We participate actively in a number of ILPA initiatives and are proud to claim ILPA’s executive director, Andrea Huntington, as a distinguished Shirley Heinze alum. She moved from a senior position with us to ILPA in 2021.
Shirley Heinze Land Trust has enjoyed tremendous growth over the past few years, more than doubling our acreage and the number of our preserves, and we have expanded our mission to include agriculture and water quality. Through grants, the generosity of private donors, and the gift of time by hundreds of volunteers, we have steadily enhanced our stewardship activities, the number and quality of hiking trails and amenities at our preserves, and the scope of our program activities.
If you are interested in learning more about the Land Trust Alliance or ILPA, you can explore their websites. And if you are visiting elsewhere in Indiana or in another part of the country, you can find nearby land trusts, or you can promote them to friends and relatives from afar, by visiting the designated pages on the LTA and ILPA websites.
We are Shirley Heinze, and we are a land trust!