Stewardship Planning
Stewardship planning is an essential first step to understanding the condition of your land and how it can be improved to benefit natural systems. We offer several levels of stewardship plans, ranging from preliminary assessments based on a single site visit to comprehensive plans that include species inventories, implementation strategies, restoration and routine cost estimates, and task prioritization. As part of the stewardship planning process, we research the public information that is available for a site (topography, soils, hydrology, land uses) and record new observations about plants, animals, and their habitats during site visits. We identify conservation priorities that reflect the landowner’s ecological, recreational, scenic, or programmatic goals.
Project Oversight and Monitoring
When a landowner or land manager is ready to implement the recommendations in a stewardship plan, the Center for Conservation Landowners can provide referrals of contractors who are qualified to perform the work, whether it involves controlling invasive plant species, planting trees on abandoned cropland, or converting a hayfield to native grassland meadow. Additional services include project oversight to ensure that the specifications for site preparation and installation are followed. We can continue to monitor your restored land and provide guidance on site maintenance and how to adapt your stewardship to the natural dynamics of an ecologically sound landscape.
Outreach and Education
One of the primary purposes of the Center for Conservation Landowners is to share our knowledge about the importance and practice of land stewardship. Using our nature preserves as models and outdoor classrooms, we encourage landowners and land managers to enrich interior forests, restore native meadows, and revitalize streamside corridors degraded by overuse or neglect. Our approach to landowner outreach ranges from presentations and field trips to hands-on workshops. We have documented many of our proven land stewardship practices in a stewardship handbook, how-to guides, and case study profiles that are available to interested landowners and land managers.
