Skip navigation
sponsored by 

Private landowners conserve 37 million acres

Acreage equal to state of Georgia set aside by local land trusts

Video: Environment  
Who’s still a good penguin?
July 18: NBC's Clare Duffy catches up with everyone's favorite little blue penguin as he gets ready for an important rite of passage – jumping into the big penguin pool.

  Photo features  
  More
Image: Bee on flower
Zuma Press
  The Week in Pictures
A bird, a  bee, and a Spanish kiss highlight a week of images from around the world.
Image: Peruvian inmates
Reuters
PhotoBlog
View and discuss the pictures and issues that caught our eyes.
updated 8:13 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2006

WASHINGTON - Private U.S. landowners have set aside land comparable in acreage to Georgia for conservation purposes.

A new tally of U.S. private land conservation efforts finds a boom in the number of smaller, local land trusts, particularly in the West, seeking to compensate for the 2 million acres of farms, forests and open spaces developed nationally each year.

Nature areas, wildlife habitat, open spaces, waterways, wetlands and other lands conserved through private means rose to 37 million acres — roughly the size of Georgia — from the 24 million acres conserved as of 2000, the Land Trust Alliance said Thursday.

Story continues below ↓
advertisement

The nonprofit charitable group attributed the trend to the rising popularity of private land trusts, towns wanting to preserve their quality of life, state and local bond initiatives and people concerned about sprawl and unplanned development.

States with the highest total acres conserved are California, Maine, Colorado, Montana, Virginia, New York, Vermont, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the group said.

The 54 percent increase over five years is led by the 11.9 million acres conserved by state and local land trusts. Other growth has come through large national groups, such as The Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, The Conservation and The Trust for Public Land.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Sponsored links

Resource guide

Get Your 2008 Credit Score

Search Jobs

Find your next car

Find Your Dream Home

Find a business to start

$7 trades, no fee IRAs