The Eagle Valley Land Trust recently received a generous grant from Wells Fargo Foundation to fund a robust program to identify and evaluate important local land for conservation.  EVLT's Conservation Potential Program is a tool to identify private land in Eagle County with the highest potential for conservation. The program analyzes the four recognized conservation values of:  Open Space, Public Recreation, Wildlife Habitat and Historic Preservation.

Beth Chabot with Wells Fargo presents a grant for the Conservation Potential Program to EVLT's Executive Director, Kara Heide

Our new geo-database of conservation values turns disparate projects into a comprehensive strategic vision for the natural environment in our community.  Using a wealth of data regarding each of the four recognized conservation values, we can identify where important concentrations of these conservation values exist.  But this data, by its nature, does not relate to property boundary lines.  As anyone who has had the heart pounding experience of finding a black bear in their backyard knows, nature does not care about the arbitrary lines we draw on maps to indicate land ownership. 

EVLT's Conservation Potential Program fills the gap by taking raw conservation value data and relating it to the privately owned land parcels in Eagle County using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.  For example, there are 88 wildlife data sets available from Colorado Parks and Wildlife tracking 20 different species in Eagle County.  Using GIS software, we can identify what habitats and species are present on each and every parcel of privately owned land.  With a little more work we can then rank land parcels from the highest wildlife presence to the lowest.   We can then take a similar approach to the other conservation values to provide a comprehensive, objective analysis of the lands with the highest potential for conservation in our community.  In addition to proactively identifying potential  conservation opportunities, the program allows EVLT staff to prepare information-rich reports to objectively evaluate conservation projects. 

The Eagle Valley Land Trust thanks Wells Fargo Foundation for their environmental leadership and their generosity in helping to fund the Conservation Potential Program.  Printed outreach materials for this program were funded by an additional grant from Tax Credit Connection, Inc.