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

We all agree the Registry works great and looks good—but what does it do for conservation? In Notes from the Field, users report connections and opportunities that have occurred because of their Registry participation.

For our first Notes from the Field, here’s Jeffrey Kee, Oregon Water Trust:

“I received a call from the Monument Soil and Water Conservation District manager who told me somebody from NRG, an environmental engineering company located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had asked about the Bologna Place project. So I called them and they mentioned having a client who had since found what they were looking for, but they wanted to keep my project in their file if they had additional needs in the future. The client may have been looking for some place to mitigate for adverse impacts they were having on a project someplace else…..I was quite pleased that the Conservation Registry had gotten some of the needs I have for conservation at the Bologna Place out there and onto somebody’s radar….I sure would love it if somebody could help me turn our part time steelhead creek into full time rearing habitat with help from the best water engineers with the lowest workers comp insurance rates….beavers.

You can print that.”
– Jeffrey Kee, Project Manager, Oregon Water Trust -a program of The Freshwater Trust

If you have a story about how the Conservation Registry has helped your project, please tell your story by comment on this blog. You can also e-mail me.