Rally 2023 sets the tone — and a record — in Portland

Rally 2023 saw more than 2,222 people descend on Portland, Ore., to attend Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference from Sept. 6-9, making this the most attended in-person Rally in the event’s 36-year history.

Portland welcomed the land conservation community with blue skies and warm weather. The week started with nine different field trips offering guests the opportunity to explore conservation projects in the region, from wineries and waterfalls to farms and urban parks. The “Agriculture and Land Use in the Columbia River Gorge” trip hosted by the Oregon Agricultural Trust provided attendees a chance to learn about the geographic and human history of the landscape, from the Indigenous peoples that have stewarded the land for millennia and continue to do so to this day, to Pacific Northwest farmers who raise 84% of the nation’s fresh pears. The “Urban Land Conservation” trip was hosted by the Forest Park Conservancy and gave attendees an introduction to the conservancy’s approach to conservation in its namesake Forest Park, a 5,200-acre forested park located within Portland’s city limits.

As the only national gathering of the land trust community, Rally serves to inspire and celebrate the work of land trusts across the country. An opening night welcome dinner featured a keynote address from Alliance president and CEO Andrew Bowman, as well as moving remarks from David Lewis, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies at Oregon State University. Bitter Root Land Trust in Hamilton, Mont., was presented with the 2023 National Land Trust Excellence Award for its work in multiple areas, including its work on the renewal of the county’s $10 million Open Lands Bond Program. In accepting the award on behalf of Bitter Root Land Trust, executive director Gavin Ricklefs praised his local community for uniting across different viewpoints over the shared value of place and land.

“It’s the people who care so deeply about this place who are really making land conservation happen,” said Ricklefs. “Conservation is the thing that brought this community together.”

Life-long conservationist Laura Johnson was given 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.

"Laura Johnson has been an invaluable contributor to the land trust movement in the United States and across the globe,” said Jim Levitt, director of International Land Conservation Network with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. “Her energy, her personal dedication to the cause, and her remarkable diplomatic skills have been key to the recent evolution of the practice of private and civic sector land conservation from Canada to Chile and China.”

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

The Friday morning plenary panel focused on how private land conservation has and can play a larger role in more inclusive land conservation outcomes. The panel — which included Bonnie Lewkowicz from Access Northern California, Zoraida Lopez-Diago of the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming and a co-founder of Conservationists of Color, and Wenix Red Elk of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation's Department of Natural Resources — discussed the diversity of experience and history of people and the land, and how land trusts, as allies, can support innovative strategies that increase the impact of their land conservation work and its benefits to the community.

Saturday 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. Jessica McDonald, executive director at Greenbelt Land Trust, shared some of the incredible conservation successes of the Oregon Advancing Conservation Excellence (ACE) program, a 10-year investment in land trusts across the state, and encouraged everyone to “get inspired by the audacity of this project.”

Guests also heard moving presentations from Terry Cross, senior advisor at the National Indian Child Welfare Association, and Aja DeCoteau, executive director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, as well as a short video from Chuck Sams, the 19th director of the National Park Service and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeast Oregon.

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 Providence, Rhode Island, where we hope to set attendance records once again.