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    The Land Trust Alliance keeps a pulse on legal developments and news in order to provide land trusts with comprehensive, up-to-date information and guidance. The Alliance also provides resources and support to help land trusts develop necessary procedures to uphold their mission, while staying on solid legal and financial ground.

    Education and training

    Keeping conservation on solid ground.

    The Land Trust Alliance offers support, guidance, resources, tools and leadership to land trusts across America to uphold conservation permanence by:

    • Providing a forum for private and public attorneys, appraisers and land trust professionals to share information, legal education and research on conservation defense issues.

    • Curating a comprehensive conservation defense law library with information on cases, statutes and tax code, practical tips, law review articles and sample documents.

    • Committing to making sure that land trusts win every precedent-setting case. The Alliance provides backup for the legal battles that are most important for the land trust community to win.

    • Providing free risk management tools for all of our member land trusts as affiliates of the Nonprofit Risk Management Center to help them manage their organizational risk proactively.

    You can make a difference.

    Making progress on today’s daunting environmental problems — including the decline of wildlife and worsening climate change — can feel out of reach for any one person. Engaging in land conservation, including supporting local land trusts, is an easy and tangible way to be a part of the solution.

    Together, we are gaining ground.

    Terrafirma

    10 million acres insured.

    In 2011, the Land Trust Alliance created Terrafirma, a charitable risk pool specifically for land trusts to insure them against the legal costs of safeguarding conservation. Terrafirma is owned exclusively by its 545 land trust members and, as of 2022, has insured 10 million acres of conserved land.

    Terrafirma unites land trusts across America to share in safeguarding conservation, providing a safety net for legal expenses so that land trusts have the confidence and capability to uphold conservation in perpetuity. This will help to create favorable case law, avoid unfavorable case law and protect the permanence of conserved land.

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