On December 27th, two committed landowners donated a conservation easement to protect their bella terra – beautiful land – along the Pigeon River to conserve the property’s woods, wetlands, waters and restored habitat of mixed native species and prairie.

Following Mary Garton’s Bur Oak easement, this makes two projects that GLC has helped protect along the Pigeon River Corridor, about two miles apart.

We THANK these landowners and YOU, our supporters, FOR YOUR HELP TO MAKE CONSERVATION HAPPEN in our community!!!

Your support helped us to accomplish these Glacial Lakes Conservancy highlights in 2011:

•    We did it!  GLC’s Grasshopper Hill Preserve!  This year we launched and completed a successful campaign to raise the funds needed for acquisition, costs, short & long term stewardship! At the end of September, we purchased our second property to own and manage. This took a tremendous amount of effort and we sincerely thank our sellers Noelle Jonas & Mark Meeusen, key donors, Preservation Partners, volunteers, members and the Sheboygan County Stewardship Grant that made it happen.

•    We expanded! The Gary & Mary Drohman Manitou Maples Conservation Easement in Manitowoc County was donated to GLC in late November to protect their land’s beautiful natural habitat and productive farmland.

•    We learned! by attending Gathering Waters’ Annual Land Trust Retreat & the National LTA Land Conservation Conference Rally.

•    We grew our Preservation Partner members this year from 17 to 31! A Partner Dinner was held in May to provide attendees with GLC’s plans to keep moving forward in local land protection.

•    We updated our Website! with more landowner information and tools, a land trust video, photo gallery and donations accepted online.

•    We created the GLC Land Team with a talented volunteer team of Shirley Griffin, Sarah Majerus, and Tony Smith who walk, document and conduct inventories of project properties.

•    We had fun at GLC’s Annual Wine & Cheese Tasting/Dessert Auction at Parallel 44 Vineyard & Winery in Kewaunee County in April.

•    We walked, lunched, and celebrated in the sunshine! In June, GLC volunteer naturalist Pat Robinson led a guided tour at the William & Andrea Iwen Lunch & Land Walk Celebration.

•    And in the drizzle, we walked, lunched and celebrated some more at the Grasshopper Hill Preserve Lunch & Land Walk Celebration at nearby Fischer Farm in October.

•    Then we dined at the GLC Annual Event Dinner in December at Margaux and learned about the history and ecology of the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge from ornithologist and naturalist, Bill Volkert.

Happy New Year from Glacial Lakes Conservancy!

Big Gains in Voluntary Land Conservation Despite Recession

Land Trusts Conserve 10 Million U.S. Acres, Outpace Major Government Land Acquisition Program.

Kohler, Wisconsin – The first census of land trusts in five years found 10 million new acres conserved nationwide since 2005, including 119,960 acres here in Wisconsin.

The National Land Trust Census, released by the Land Trust Alliance, shows that voluntarily protected land increased 27 percent between 2005 and 2010. In the same time period, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, a major federal conservation program, added just over 500,000 acres and saw a 38% funding cut. The census is online at www.lta.org/census.

A total of 47 million acres—an area over twice the size of all the national parks in the contiguous United States—are now protected by land trusts. A greater percentage of the new acreage comes through local and state land trusts like Glacial Lakes Conservancy (GLC). In Wisconsin, land trusts conserved 119,960 acres between 2005 and 2010, a 56% increase in land protected.

“Wisconsinites value their land, and we are conserving it at the community level,” said Vickie Hall, Executive Director of Glacial Lakes Conservancy. “Here in Wisconsin, we are investing in our future with land trusts that are working to save farmland, protect water resources, and provide healthy places for humans and critters for generations to come.”

Over the last 5 years, GLC more than doubled the private lands it conserves, aided by the addition of staff in 2005 to meet the growing interest of landowners looking for a local land trust. Landowners like Bill and Andrea Iwen, who wanted to preserve their Kewaunee River corridor property adjacent to the state’s C.D. Basadny Fish & Wildlife Area.  And landowners like Gary and Mary Drohman of Manitowoc County, who completed a project in November 2011 to preserve the associated habitats of their mature woods, floodplain forest, restored prairie, ponds, wetlands as well as the productivity of their farmland.

During that same period, GLC also accepted its first gift of land, the Wm. F. Christel Memorial Woods & Wetlands Preserve in Valders. This foray into land ownership paved the way for a successful campaign in 2011 to purchase and establish GLC’s new 25-acre Grasshopper Hill Preserve in Elkhart Lake to protect the steep slopes and wildlife habitat of this glacial remnant.

An enhanced tax deduction for conservation easement donations has helped America’s land trusts work with farmers, ranchers and other modest-income landowners to sustain a remarkable pace of more than one million acres protected by conservation easements each year!  But if Congress allows this incentive to expire at the end of 2011, fewer landowners will receive tax benefits from the generous donation of development rights on their land.

Glacial Lakes Conservancy thanks Rep(s) James Sensenbrenner, Tammy Baldwin, Gwen Moore and Ron Kind for being among the 262 House and 11 Senate co-sponsors of H.R. 1964/S. 339, bills to make this important conservation tax incentive permanent. That’s more co-sponsors than any other tax bill in Congress!  We encourage Rep(s) Tom Petri and Reid Ribble and Senators Ron Johnson and Herb Kohl to join them as co-sponsors of this important legislation.

Other findings of the new National Land Trust Census include:

• Land trusts saw a 70% increase in volunteers from the previous 5-year period.
• Since 2005, there are 57% more paid employees and contractors at Wisconsin land trusts.
• Operating budgets for land trusts are up 36% since 2005. State and local trusts nearly tripled operating endowments in five years ensuring that land trust-protected land stays protected.
• The preservation of family farms and ranchlands is now a priority for 61% of trusts, up from 21% that listed farmland as the top priority in 2005.
• Urban parks, gardens or open spaces is now a priority for 27 % of trusts, a threefold increase over respondents in 2005.

Glacial Lakes Conservancy is a local land trust conservation organization that works to permanently protect working, urban, and natural lands that contribute significantly to the ecological integrity, agricultural sustainability, scenic beauty and recreational enjoyment of our five counties. And we ensure the permanence of conservation by advocating for the laws and resources needed to defend protected land over time. Glacial Lakes Conservancy serves Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, Calumet and Fond du Lac counties in Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan Basin.

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Because of supporters like you, we have great news. After many years
of work, special donors, a grant, and some fantastic volunteers,
Glacial Lakes Conservancy is pleased to announce that it has
successfully acquired and established the 25-acre Grasshopper Hill
Preserve!

This issue of our newsletter, Landscapes Fall 2011,  features this project.

This Town of Rhine property represents our first project in Sheboygan
County to own and manage. Our first in the region is the Wm. F.
Christel Woods and Wetlands Preserve, a gift of land from the Holsens
in the Village of Valders

Since 2006, GLC has been working to create a 25-acre nature preserve
from a glacial remnant. In the spring of 2011, family members of the
Fischer Farmstead agreed to work with GLC because of their shared
vision and the late LaVern Meeusen’s wish to protect the farm’s steep-
sided, wooded hill from future development.

This vision was shared by others, which is how GLC could get to this
wonderful outcome!

The property will be managed for its wildlife habitat and steeply-
sloped kame and kettle topography in order to preserve and protect the
natural ecological values by preventing the establishment of invasive
species, allowing natural processes to continue, limiting use to that
which is compatible with natural area designation, and restoring
disturbed areas. Volunteers interested in assisting GLC in the
management of its preserves should contact our office.

Thank you to all who donated and volunteered for this great project.
And thank you for the letters of support from the Village of Elkhart
Lake, the Town of Rhine, and the Elkhart Lake Improvement Association,
which assisted us in gaining a $60,000 Sheboygan County Stewardship
Grant.

Conservation like this just doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a
tremendous effort and a community’s support of the local land trust
for all the work we do in our region.

We deeply appreciate your on-going support so that we can conserve
land through private lands conservation or with land trust ownership,
like the new Grasshopper Hill Preserve. Donations to GLC are most
welcome — by mail or online!

Sincerely,
Vickie Hall
Executive Director

Chat with friends, bid on auction items, and enjoy a fine meal this holiday season. Registration is required and includes a fabulous dinner, glass of wine, dessert and coffee.

Contact us if you would like to become an event sponsor or donate an item, service, or certificate to our auction.

Glacial Lakes Conservancy land trust has just launched our refreshed
website at www.glaciallakes.org!

We have updated our website using a new template to give us a cleaner
look and the tools to make changes to content right from our office.
It provides a more dynamic way to deliver information about our
nonprofit land trust to the community of northeast and east-central
Wisconsin. With fresher content, more pages and faster navigation, we
plan to provide more resources for the many private landowners who
contact us about long-term protection of their property. Plus, for the
first time ever, we are pleased to be able to accept online
donations.

GLC’s refreshed website features our Grasshopper Hill Preserve project
as well as our partnership in the the Lake Michigan Shorelands
Alliance (LMSA) as one of the land trusts of the Lake Michigan Basin.
Right now, on our home page, you can view a LMSA video and link to the
resource-based maps that LMSA has produced. Or follow a home page link
to the Grasshopper Hill Preserve page. This project is exciting for us
because it represents GLC’s first campaign to purchase, own and manage
land.

In the coming days and weeks, I’ll be working on content and learning
how to make corrections and updates with our friends at Makin’ Hey
Communications. Please visit us on the web and let me know what you
think. Hope you like the update!

Sincerely,
Vickie Hall
Executive Director

p.s. Look for GLC in the September Issue of Elkhart Lake’s Depot
Dispatch!