New England Rally sets another record

More than 2,350 people descended on Providence, R.I., to attend Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference, making it the most attended in-person Rally in the event’s 37-year history.

The week started with the second-ever Indigenous Land Conservation Summit, attended by more than 100 individuals and organized in collaboration with an Indigenous Planning Team. The Indigenous Land Conservation Summit is an Indigenous-only affinity gathering for leaders from across the country for relationship building and knowledge sharing to honor land relationships and advance land access, return and stewardship. Last year’s inaugural summit in Portland, Ore., brought together more than 80 people from more than 40 Indigenous communities, and it spurred the Alliance to continue building out and fundraising for a new portfolio of work to directly support Indigenous land conservation leaders, Native-led land trusts, and to grow the allyship of non-Native-led land trusts in the service of land relationships, access, return and stewardship.

The first two days of Rally also featured a slew of field trip opportunities for Rally guests that provided a chance to explore conservation projects in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The 10 trips focused on various issues, from restoring and preserving salt marshes and pine barrens, to building urban agriculture and equitable food systems in cities. Narrow River Land Trust co-hosted a trip up the Narrow River to explore the salt marshes and forests of the John H. Chafee National Wildlife Refuge and discover the role salt marshes play in coastal resiliency and the restoration work that the land trust is doing. The accredited Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust hosted a tour of its Pawtucket Farm Wildlife Sanctuary, a former Christmas tree farm where the land trust is building trails and an outdoor classroom based on community input, as well as a tour of Mill City Grows’ Urban Farm.

As the only national gathering of the land trust community, Rally inspires and celebrates the work of land trusts across the country. Following the Indigenous Land Conservation Summit and two days of field trips, the opening night welcome dinner featured presentations from Heather Angel Mars-Martins and Thawn Sherenté Harris. Mars-Martins is a member of the Narragansett Indian Nation of Rhode Island where she currently serves as a member of its Tribal Government and acts as a liaison to the Narragansett Indian Tribal Economic Development Regulatory Commission, the NIT Health Center, the NIT Broadband Initiative, NIT Boys & Girls Club and NIT Farm. And Sherenté Harris is a storyteller and citizen of the Narragansett Tribe who shared his culture with dinner guests through oral history and traditional song and dance.

The welcome dinner also featured a keynote address from Alliance interim president and CEO Jennifer Miller Herzog, as well as a “fireside chat” with Alliance board members Michael Polemis, Blair Fitzsimons and David Calle.

The Land Conservancy of New Jersey in Boonton, N.J., received the 2024 National Land Trust Excellence Award for its work in multiple areas, including its land-back project with the Indigenous people of the Ramapo Mountains. The project was a multi-year effort involving parties in multiple states to purchase the Ramapo Munsee Lenape Nation’s most sacred site, help the tribe establish a land trust and then donate the land to the tribe in perpetuity.

“This recognition by our peers will energize our organization and serve as a catalyst to expand our efforts to empower future generations of conservation leaders and connect people back to the land, and for that we are deeply grateful,” said David Epstein, president of The Land Conservancy of New Jersey.

Conservationist Mavis Gragg received the distinguished Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award. Named for the conservationist who inspired the Alliance’s founding in 1982, the award ranks among the organization’s highest honors. Gragg is co-founder of HeirShares, an organization that delivers comprehensive educational content, data and technology to empower heirs’ property landowners and attorneys dealing with heirs’ property issues, as well as a founding member of the Conservationists of Color, an affinity group creating space for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement to connect.

“The word that comes to mind when I think about Mavis is ‘connector,’ because that’s what she does — she connects people to each other and she connects people to the resources they need to achieve their land goals,” said Herzog.

In addition to the field trips and awards, the week was filled with workshops, seminars and plenaries covering a broad range of topics.

Friday’s plenary session was emceed by Erin Heskett, the Alliance’s vice president of conservation initiatives and featured a moving and thought-provoking presentation by Randy and Bella Noka, citizens and elders of the Narragansett Tribal Nation, both of whom have served as Tribal Council Members on behalf of their people.

The Friday morning session also introduced Rally attendees to this year’s conservation scholars. The Alliance’s Scholars for Conservation Leadership Program is a career-and-leadership-development program that expands opportunities for undergraduate students to pursue careers in natural resource management and conservation — especially Black, Indigenous and people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, first-generation college students and other students from communities that haven’t always been prioritized in conservation programming.

Jennifer Miller Herzog returned to host the Saturday morning plenary, which featured panelists discussing how private land conservation has played and can play a much larger role in addressing climate change and land justice while also promoting more inclusive land conservation outcomes. The panel was moderated by Ronda Lee Chapman, Trust for Public Lands’ associate vice president for equity and belonging, and included Dinalyn Spears of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, Indigenous land and water conservationist Leslie Jonas, Angel Pena of the Nuestra Tierra Conservation Project, and climate listener Kate Schapira.

This year’s event ended with a closing reception on Saturday evening, after which Rally guests headed back to their hotels to get ready for the return trip back to their hometowns and land trusts. Next year’s Rally will be in Cleveland, Ohio, where we hope to set a new attendance record for the third year in a row.