Our Future

"We have less than 20 years to protect the land we love."

This article originally appeared in our newsletter, Landmarks, Summer 2007

Four years ago I “retired” and joined the Land Trust Board. Two years later I became the Executive Director. I said in a staff meeting this summer that the last two years have been like “managing chaos.” That’s not quite right, but it does capture some of the feeling of managing the dazzling changes at the Land Trust in the past two years.

We’ve adopted an ambitious strategic plan to protect thousands of acres of our county. We’ve hired a great staff to implement this plan. Community support and our budget have tripled in two years. We have begun talks with more than twenty landowners interested in protecting their lands. It hasn’t been chaos, but it has been hectic. It will remain hectic, but this summer I feel like I am catching my breath, liked I’ve reached a plateau after a long hike up a steep hill. I can see our future. That “our” is not just the Land Trust’s future, but all of our futures, the future of Santa Cruz County.

When I joined the Land Trust Board I read something from the Land Trust Alliance that has stuck with me and driven me ever since: we have twenty years to protect the land that we love. Here and all across the country the pressures of development and the urge for conservation are battling over land. Each year local land trusts protect 800,000 acres – and each year two million acres of land are lost to development. “At this rate,” the Land Trust Alliance concluded, “we have about 20 years to protect our most cherished landscapes before they will be lost forever. Either we will develop the vision and resources to protect our treasured landscapes, or we will lose those places forever.” The clock is ticking. That report is four years old.

We have the vision to protect our county, and with your support, we will have the resources as well. Twenty years ago what we now call Silicon Valley was called “The Valley of the Heart’s Delight” – homage to its agricultural riches. Twenty years ago the Central Valley was farm land with a few small cities. During the 1990s the Central Valley lost an average of almost 10,000 acres of farmland a year – an annual loss equivalent to two-thirds of all the prime farmland in Santa Cruz County.

I came out of retirement because I wanted to do all I could to save the land I love right here. I want to see farming in the Pajaro Valley. I want our forests to remain forests and not become suburbs in the trees. I want to see our coastline and not have it blotted out by buildings. And I believe we can do all this – together.

This newsletter is full of the details of the work of conservation – how we prioritize our work, what conservation forestry looks like on the ground, and why we need permanent protection for our county. That is what I and our staff and Board work on every day. But what drives us is the view after we’ve climbed the steep hills before us -- our future. It is your future too and I look forward to getting there with you.


Terry Corwin
Executive Director

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