Conservation Book Club Online – Nature’s Best Hope

Greenbelt Land Trust Conservation Book Club
Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard

Join Greenbelt and Benton Soil and Water Conservation District as we will be reading and discussing the latest book from Douglas Tallamy, author of “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants”. “Nature’s Best Hope” expands on the concepts of his previous work and shows how homeowners everywhere can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats.

 

Co-hosts Matt Benotsch, Greenbelt’s Outreach Coordinator and a dedicated native plant gardener, and Heath Kierstead, BSWCD’s Communications and Community Engagement Manager and coordinator of their upcoming native plant sales will lead the book discussion. We will also explore the basics of native landscaping in the Willamette Valley and discuss plant selection, maintenance and the wildlife you can attract and provide habitat for in your yard.

 

We will be meeting via Zoom.

 

Sign up here to save your spot and we will send you more details!

Monitoring Season

Throughout the year, our conservation and stewardship staff, volunteers, and partners from various agencies and organizations are busy monitoring birds, turtles, the success of restoration plantings, and the status of invasive weeds on the properties we protect. Monitoring is done on foot, with drones, and with remote cameras. In addition to monitoring these components of our conservation work, we also perform annual monitoring of each property as a whole. Every property we protect, whether we hold title to the land or a conservation easement, is visited and evaluated annually.

As land restoration work winds down at the end of the summer, autumn is traditionally the time for monitoring visits to our conservation easements. Conservation Coordinator Claire Fox is getting a jump on monitoring in 2020 and has started the yearly round of visiting the properties we protect with conservation easements, a task that she enjoys for the interaction with nature and with people.

“My favorite part of monitoring easements is getting outside with people on their land. I like to hear the stories about what makes this place special — whether it is a favorite tree, a neat habitat project, or a family memory of time spent outside. You really learn that for some people, caring for their land is a labor of love.”

What is a Conservation Easement?

A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a land trust and a willing landowner that protects a property’s conservation values forever. The landowner sells, or more commonly donates the easement to the land trust and relinquishes the right to take actions that would lower the ecological values of the land. Typical restrictions include commercial logging, mining, and large scale development.

Conservation easements are entered into with landowners who want to see their properties remain unchanged in the future. Conservation easements must provide public benefits such as water quality, agricultural and scenic values, or wildlife habitat. Economic benefits to the landowner may be realized through tax benefits and estate planning. Floodplains, wetlands, riparian areas, healthy soil and productive farmland, big trees and prairie wildflowers – conservation easements can protect it all!

A conservation easement transfers with ownership, ensuring that the holder of the easement can continue to protect and maintain the important ecological values. Greenbelt holds 27 conservation easements protecting farms, forests, prairie, and wetlands across the Mid-Willamette Valley. Part of our job in holding a conservation easement is to make sure that the terms of the easement are being upheld and that the conservation values of the property continue to be protected. We accomplish this through annual monitoring.

Monitoring Season

Every year we pay a visit to each property to monitor the easement. We have a conversation with the landowner to talk about their land management goals, address any concerns that they have or we have, and share updates. Then we walk the boundaries of the property and visit the major features to monitor habitat dynamics and identify any threats or changes.

Noteworthy changes are documented with notes and photographs in a monitoring report. We keep all of this information in a permanent file to document the condition of the property over time.

Protected Forever

The collaborative partnerships we have with our easement landowners allow us to protect much more than just the lands we could purchase outright. Private landowners who want to see the ecological values of their land remain intact have protected nearly 9 million acres in the U.S. through conservation easements.

 

Horseshoe Lake

Greenbelt Land Trust has been monitoring some of our easements for over 25 years!  Properties have passed on to new landowners over the years but the ecological values and protections are left intact. We are committed to protecting the natural values and public benefits of these special places in perpetuity.

Conservation Book Club Online – H is for Hawk

BOOK CLUB MOVES ONLINE

The most recent meeting of the Greenbelt Conservation Book Club was postponed a few times, so thank you for your patience. We are bringing it back on May 21st, and moving it online!

We will be discussing “H is for Hawk” a memoir from Helen Macdonald, who turns to the training of a young Goshawk in the wake of her father’s death. We will set up the online platform, you read the book, and log in ready to discuss it.

Sign up here to save your spot and we will send you more details.

35 acres forever!

35 acres protected

35 acres protected!

Greenbelt is excited to announce that we recently closed on a new conservation easement — protecting 35 acres along the Muddy Creek — forever!

Strategically investing in protecting our water sources, habitats and working landscapes are the foundation of Greenbelt’s conservation priorities.  The Muddy Creek corridor in Benton County running from Corvallis to Finley Refuge and up into its headwater near Alpine, has been a conservation priority for Greenbelt for nearly 20 years.  This region benefits from the fish, wildlife and plant diversity this corridor provides as well as the increased watershed function.

Muddy Creek is designated a priority corridor for restoration and conservation by Greenbelt and our partners including  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Marys River Watershed Council, The Institute for Applied Ecology, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and others.  Greenbelt and our partners are working to create a healthy and resilient region that will continue to support the diversity of species and naturally functioning water systems.

If you can imagine walking through a richly diverse forest dominated by Oregon white oak and Oregon ash trees, native shrubs and flowering understory plants you can understand how this area is a culturally significant area for the bands of Kalapuya Indians who traditionally inhabited this region.  Throughout the basin and specifically on this property, the oak structure found in the riparian habitat range from large open canopy trees with branches sweeping the ground to mixed-aged woodland trees with native understory. The understory includes native shrubs such as Indian plum and snowberry and forbs such as camas and fawn lilies. The riparian forest provides shade and bank stabilization to Muddy Creek along with nutrient cycling and acts as a dynamic interface between land and water. The forest supports an array of wildlife species including deer, cougar and bobcat, red-legged frogs and rough-skinned newts, and resident and migratory birds. A vibrant, resilient and functioning riparian habitat such as this, provides the necessary shade, cover and forage for the fish and wildlife benefits of healthy water and creek habitat.

Muddy Creek is a low gradient valley bottom stream that meanders through the riparian habitat of the property. Unique to the Valley bottom Muddy Creek remains unchannelized and has an active and functioning floodplain that inundates regularly. The stream, swales, and floodplain provide refuge, foraging, and migration habitats for Oregon chub, cutthroat trout, and other native fish.

Conserved lands, like these 35 acres, also help provide clean drinking water, improved floodwater storage capacity, increased groundwater recharge,  and enhanced ecosystem services for downstream communities.

Greenbelt’s work to protect the land is strategic and intentional. We develop our conservation priorities around building a connected, healthy and resilient landscape that supports nature and people.

Passing the torch

Matt Blakeley-Smith

Matt Blakeley-Smith, Stewardship Director

Recently, Greenbelt’s Stewardship Program had a passing of the torch. Longtime Director and amazing leader, Jeff Baker, stepped down from the Director position into a part-time, non-management role and Matt Blakeley-Smith took the helm as Greenbelt’s second-ever Stewardship Director. An organic transition that supports exciting next chapters for Jeff, Matt and Greenbelt Land Trust. In these first few months, Jeff and the whole Greenbelt team will support Matt’s transition into the Director role. We’ve been in such good hands and will continue to be so.

After 11 years of leading Greenbelt’s innovative and impactful stewardship efforts, Jeff Baker is looking forward to a change that will allow him to spend more time with his children while they are young. “In the last decade, Jeff has nearly single-handedly built Greenbelt’s Stewardship Program into what it is today. Under his expert guidance, Greenbelt has successfully brought in over $4 Million in permanent stewardship funds for our properties, launched a region-wide restoration program, and established trusted partners across the Valley. We are thrilled that Jeff is staying with Greenbelt in this new role, continuing to lend his expertise to our growing team,” said Jessica McDonald, Greenbelt’s Associate Director.Quote from Michael Pope

This passing of the torch could not be better timed. “Fortunately, Greenbelt already had a great candidate in Matt Blakeley-Smith to take on the role of Stewardship Director. He’s shown himself to be passionate and innovative about caring for our lands—securing funding and restoring 1,000 acres of wildlife habitat and maintaining many more acres. He’ll bring many good ideas to the stewardship program. As a Stewardship Coordinator I look forward to working with our conservation easement owners and with our stewardship staff to make the program the best that it can be,” said Jeff Baker.

Matt Blakeley-Smith has been with Greenbelt for nearly seven years and brings to his work vision, passion, and commitment for protecting and restoring nature. Matt’s journey began studying biology in college because he was fascinated by microscopic invertebrates with scythe-like appendages, predatory plants, and redwood cathedrals. It didn’t occur to him—at that time—that biology jobs would be scarce once he graduated. “I feel so fortunate to work for Greenbelt doing what I love, “ said Matt Blakeley-Smith.

When it comes to stories of conservation, the media often reports on stories that feel otherworldly, either by distance or direct experience. “The Willamette Valley has its own majesty but we often take those things closest to us for granted. I want to highlight the exquisite diversity that surrounds us, but that may be just out of sight for many people. With the development pressure associated with Oregon’s growing popularity, it is essential to me to preserve what we can as quickly as possible,” Blakeley-Smith said.

When looking ahead at potential challenges place-based land trusts face, Matt thinks it will be important to also engage communities outside of Benton County, but within Greenbelt’s service area to develop our work in ways that are unique to each community, while sharing our core mission of protecting land and connecting people to nature.

“Willamette Valley ecosystems systems are damaged to the point that we can’t just let ‘nature take its course’ since too many pieces of the puzzle have been lost. Our goal is to actively manage the land in order to rebuild key relationships between species, with the understanding that there is no going back to pristine wilderness. Land trusts also have time on our side, so we can continue to adapt and restore the land for decades to come,” said Blakeley-Smith.

What drives Matt is the deep desire to see meadows filled with Camas and Shooting Stars where butterflies flutter in abundance and the Meadowlarks sing. He wants farm fields reclaimed by Greenbelt and that frame the Willamette River to develop into forests that can shelter a herd of elk and all other native creatures. And, he wants everyone to have access to the outdoors and abundant opportunities to enjoy nature in their own way.

“It is truly humbling to step back and think about the massive restoration initiatives that Matt has taken on with Greenbelt, including the complex planning to transform entire landscapes into functional floodplain forests and native prairies, building relationships with landowners and funders, and leading outreach programs that inspire others to become land stewards. There are few people as knowledgeable and dedicated to ecology as Matt, and we are all just fortunate to learn from him and have him step into this role as Stewardship Director,” McDonald said.

Greenbelt Land Trust offers deep gratitude to Jeff Baker for blazing the trail and a joyful welcome to Matt, stepping in to take the lead.