The Eastern Sierra region of California is widely recognized for its awesome mountain and desert vistas, pastoral farms and ranches, thriving fish and wildlife, as well as our expansive public lands and associated recreation opportunities. Eastern Sierra Land Trust works with willing landowners to preserve these vital lands for their scenic, agricultural, natural, recreational, historical, and watershed values using the conservation tools available to regional land trusts.

In January 2009 we were invited to participate in the beta release of the Conservation Registry for California after being awarded a Defenders’ Living Lands Biodiversity Grant. As the only land trust serving the large Eastern Sierra region, this opportunity caught our attention because we work hard to increase awareness of our efforts and our mission both within our local population, as well as to the numerous visitors to our region. The Registry also seemed like a good opportunity to share information with neighboring conservation organizations, potential funders, and public agencies.

Though we have in-house GIS capability that we rely on for the production of most of our maps for our stewardship and lands activities, the Conservation Registry appealed to our organization because it was a simple way to make the jump from ‘static’ maps to online dynamic maps that interested members, partners, and others can explore on their own to learn more about our completed projects and important work. Adding projects to the database was simple using the online forms and checklists, and the result is an attractive and informative web site for each project that is visible to the public.

One of the aspects of the Registry that we are most interested in is the potential for information sharing and collaboration with other organizations or agencies on important conservation work being done in and around our service area on targets such as priority watersheds or particular species of concern. As more projects are added to the Registry we can explore the database spatially using the map interface, or using keywords, to see where our own current and completed projects exist in relation to the work being done by others. Hopefully this will allow us to identify opportunities for potential collaboration while also highlighting areas that may be being overlooked. The more groups that adopt the tool, the more useful it will become.

View Eastern Sierra Land Trust projects in the Registry:

Benton Hot Springs Ranch Conservation Easement
Mono County, California
Actions: conservation easement, control invasive plants

Big Hotsprings Ranch Conservation Easement
Mono County, California
Actions: conservation easement

Yednock Conservation Easement
Mono County, California
Actions: conservation easement

Crowley Hilltop Preserve
Mono County, California
Actions: develop a voluntary conservation plan

Wheeler Ridge Wildlife Migration Corridor
Mono County, California
Actions: conservation easement, education

By Aaron Johnson, Lands Program Coordinator, Eastern Sierra Land Trust

Gina LaRocco is in Sacramento on March 2nd presenting the Registry at the California Land Trust Conference along with co-presenter Larry Orman from the GreenInfo Network.

The session is called Putting Easements on the Map. Topics include development of inventories of protected areas data, and the pros and cons of making easement boundaries available to agencies and organizations doing land use and conservation planning. Participants will learn about national efforts to create GIS inventories of all protected lands, including GreenInfo Network’s California Protected Areas Database, and the web portal being developed for the Conservation Registry.

If you plan to be at the conference, drop by to learn about these new technologies and strategies.

Still on the road….Sara Vickerman and Gina LaRocco will offer a Registry demo and discuss the proposed habitat/biodiversity metric and calculator on March 3rd in Sacramento. Busy week! E-mail Kassandra for the informational flyer.