[pct-l] some stats on a few trail non-profits

[Scott Williams]

I'd like to add some of my own experiences with non-profits in our area.  I
was a founding member of the Muir Heritage Land Trust back in 1989.  It was
a non-profit formed by Tina Batt, a wonderful local environmentalist and a
number of us who had been involved in a protracted battle to save the
Franklin Hills, the ridges that border the town of Martinez.  When we
started winning the political battle, we needed a non-profit organization
to be able to purchase land and hold it until it could be turned over to
the East Bay Regional Park District.  For the first year it was all
volunteer, but eventually we were able to fund a position for Tina, who
doubled her efforts to get us a name in the land business.  No one, or any
corporations, gave us the time of day at first as we had no credibility
yet.

That changed when a deal between the Federal Government working for the
John Muir National Historic Site and a local rancher went sour after years
of work, over the final price of the land.  For a mere $100,000 difference
it was all going south.  The land trust stepped up and through local
appeals and literally bake sales and other fundraisers and loans, we came
up with the cash and the result was that Mount Wanda and Mount Helen were
added to the National Historic Site.  Now when you visit Muir's Home you
can also hike some of his lands where he took both of his girls hiking when
they were little.

After that we were seen as professionals in the land business and were able
to hire staff and pay to build trails and properly steward the lands, we
began buying ourselves (great chanterelling up there).  With staff and more
and more fundraising, we've now preserved over 2,500 acres in the lands
bordering Muir's old ranch, and beyond.  It started small, but is still
growing, and as it grows, the land acquisitions keep piling up and the
trails and open spaces keep getting longer.  We hope to be able to walk the
ridges from Martinez to Richmond someday (a big section of Bay Ridge Trail)
all on park land.  http://www.muirheritagelandtrust.org/history.htm

The second organization is Save Mount Diablo, a land trust begun in 1971 to
help preserve the lands surrounding our central mountain.  When it began,
and for all my childhood, the State Park was literally a postage stamp at
the top of one of the two peaks.  Hundreds of thousands of acres
surrounding it were under threat of development.  Save Mt. Diablo went
through a  beginning similar to the Muir Heritage Land Trust.  But they've
been at it much longer, and they've gone from all volunteers to having 12
paid staff at present.  Through their efforts, professionalism and fund
raising savvy, they've now helped expand the State Park many times over, as
well as been instrumental in creating a number of huge Regional Parks and
City Open Spaces.  The hikeable area around this mountain is now we'll over
100,000 acres and is poised to expand in the near future by 25,000 to
35,000 more acres, strategically purchased to link wildlife corridors
between parks which will create an open space the size of a National Park,
all within minutes of 1,000,000 people.  A wilderness of this size,
surrounded by such an intensely populated area,  is unprecedented.  When
complete, it will link lands from the Concord Naval Weapons Station (where
all the bombs in the Vietnam War were shipped from, and now open space)
through the central part of Contra Costa County and eventually into Alameda
County to end in the south at the town of Livermore.  There's a great
article in a recent Bay Nature Magazine,
http://baynature.org/articles/oct-dec-2011/planned-wilderness/  This is a
huge area and will provide me local backpacking for weeks.

They didn't get this effective on volunteers alone, and they have many, it
was the work of very effective administrators.  Their Lands Program
Director, i.e.. land purchaser, Seth Adams has become one of the most
powerful land managers in either of the two counties and he is sought out
by land developers before getting their projects too far underway just to
see if there will be any objection from the land trust.
http://www.savemountdiablo.org/about_staff.html He's a wonderful guy and a
non profit administrator with the power of a land baron.

Organizations like the PCTA and any land trusts and land stewardship
organizations are up against corporate money and tremendous political
power.  To have even a fighting chance of saving land and effectively
negotiating with the powers out there who don't care a fig for trails, they
need professionals who become as powerful as the corporations they have to
negotiate with.  The PCTA's face in Washington and all up and down trail is
imperative if we are to keep this wonderful trail we all love in good
shape, or to have a chance at purchasing the 300 miles of trail still in
private hands.

So the jist of this diatribe is, give generously to the PCTA, more than
your membership as suggested, and hope for fundraising and more
fundraising.  And just hope we can continue to afford to keep great staff
on the payroll.  Only after becoming organizations who could hire and keep
good staff, did either or our local land trusts really flourish.  Because
they did, I sit on the edge of one of the largest urban wildernesses in
America.

Shroomer