Conserving Working Forests And Keeping Rural Economies Alive

The Conservation Fund has preserved nearly 500,000 acres of privately owned forested land over the last 20 years, through a process known as conservation easement. The Fund agrees to buy the land from investors, then adds restrictions to the deeds excluding development. The new terms allow activities like recreation and sustainable logging, where foresters select specific trees to fell and lumbermen like Gale carefully cut them and drag them out. The Conservation Fund then sells the land to new owners, who agree to maintain the easement’s terms of use, and uses proceeds of the sales to create easements in other parts of the country.

The Conservation Fund’s latest acquisition, known as the Cowee forest, once produced most of the the small forked stakes used to hold notecards in flower arrangements for the world. For nearly a century, the Cowee family bought up tracts of the forest, which supplied a steady stock of lumber for their mill in Berlin, New York, a tiny town known now as a bedroom community for Albany. Facing competition from cheap, plastic alternatives, the mill began a painful contraction, pink-slipping one-third of its employees in 2001. At the time, the mill’s general manager described the tumult: “We’re a neighborhood hardware store, and China is the Home Depot of the world.”

Written By

The Conservation Fund

At The Conservation Fund, we make conservation work for America. By creating solutions that make environmental and economic sense, we are redefining conservation to demonstrate its essential role in our future prosperity. Top-ranked for efficiency and effectiveness, we have worked in all 50 states since 1985 to protect more than 8.8 million acres of land.