Exploring your relationship to land

Growing up in a relatively new planned community, there was much about land that my siblings and I took for granted. We were quite sure that “the woods” behind our house was ours for the taking, and we used that land and the creek that ran through it to play games, build forts, ice skate during the winter and swim during the summer. Our lot was almost an acre, so we had fruit trees and grapevines, with the remainder serving as the ball field for whatever sport we were playing with our friends. For summer vacations, my family camped our way across the country, visiting public parks, forests and refuges, and taking full advantage of what we saw as “our rights” to use and access land.

As I began my career in the field of conservation, I met numerous landowners who looked like me—white—and who shared a love of the land, the open spaces and the publicly accessible places that were our rights as citizens. It was a joy to work with these landowners and figure out how conservation easements could help them meet their conservation goals, and it was even more exciting as I learned how to help landowners access local, state and federal dollars to achieve those outcomes.

As my work shifted into a focus on community-centered conservation, I saw that the landowners I had worked with were socio-economically homogeneous—primarily upper-middle and upper class; so I reached out to racially and socio-economically diverse landowners to explore potential conservation partnerships. At first, I focused on informing and educating landowners about conservation easements, but, as I drilled down into the nuts and bolts of it, I learned that the financial returns to many families of lower socio-economic status would be minimal at best. Some of the reasons were related to low-income people and people of color being forced to low-lying, less developable lands; while others were a vestige of redlining and appraisal guidelines that lowered the value of lands owned by poor people and people of color.

I learned about cultural issues related to landownership: An African American landowner asked me, “Why would my family give up [development] rights on land that my great-granddaddy, who was born a slave, worked incredibly hard to buy in the first place?” An important lesson I learned was about the structural barriers that kept certain families and individuals from accessing the capital needed to purchase land or retain ownership of land. And I learned about how land and land ownership was deeply valued and prioritized —how many farmers of color would use every penny of profit they made to buy more land, even though they would now be ineligible for food stamps or other federal benefits. I learned how families had lost ownership of land, or had it stolen by individuals and corporations using policies and statutes rooted in pre-colonial law.

These and other experiences helped me better understand that:

• Many—perhaps most—low-income people and people of color value land and land ownership as a form of social and economic power and wealth creation/retention.

• Those of us in the modern conservation movement often assume that because we don’t work with people who look different from us or are of different socio-economic status, they “don’t care about the environment.” Nothing could be further from the truth: As one landowner said, “We all want and need clean air and clean water for ourselves and our kids.”

• Conservation tools that were developed to meet the priorities of more affluent landowners don’t work for all landowners, especially those who are land-rich and cash-poor. We need to think about developing conservation tools that work for all types of landowners.

• While our experiences with, and relationships to, land may focus on recreation, there are countless additional connections others have to land: food, water, sustenance, hunting, fishing, cultural, spiritual, physical access and more. In order for our land trusts to be relevant and welcoming to diverse audiences, we need to explore programs and services that “meet people where they are,” and provide equitable access to protected lands.