National Meeting On Land Preservation In Hartford

About 1,800 conservation leaders from across the country are gathering in Hartford today to share strategies on how to protect land from development. WNPR’s Nancy Cohen reports.

Rand Wentworth, President of the Land Trust Alliance which is organizing the meeting, says people have less money right now to donate to land conservation, but he says there’s an up side to the down economy.

“We’re finding some extraordinary opportunities of land that was really slated to be a subdivison or a resort development; beautiful properties on lakes, ocean, rivers, mountains that are available now at a price we would never have dreamed of three years ago.”

Wentworth says if land preservation groups can figure out the financing they’re able to protect some key properties right now. Workshop topics at the conference include private investment strategies for conservation, preserving land using carbon offsets and saving working farms.

For WNPR, I’m Nancy Cohen.