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

[Tortoise]

Good points well made!

Tortoise

<>  Because truth matters.<>

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On 2011.11.29 20:28, Scott Williams wrote:
> 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
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