Western Reserve Land Conservancy

Our results

We are locally grown and nationally known.

Western Reserve Land Conservancy, the largest land trust in Ohio, has preserved more than 350 properties and more than 22,000 acres in our region. That’s approximately the same number of total acres in the Cleveland Metroparks system. At our current pace, we will preserve the acreage equivalent of a new Emerald Necklace – the nickname for the Metroparks system – every seven years.

We work with private landowners, governments, park systems and others to strategically preserve land in our region. Our goal is to create, along with our conservation partners, an interconnected 400,000-acre network of protected property throughout northern Ohio. Imagine a preserved natural corridor that will allow your great great granddaughter to walk from the shores of Sandusky Bay to the farms of Stark County to the banks of Conneaut Creek without stepping foot on unprotected land.

Our largest single project to date is the preservation of a 1,018-acre working farm in Lorain County. We have protected land in 15 counties, preserving everything from sprawling farms to urban greenways.

The Land Conservancy was one of 30 semifinalists for The Collaboration Prize, a national award for which more than 650 nonprofit organizations were nominated.

A Snapshot of Our Results. Fiscal Year 2009
Results as reported in our November 2009 Donor Report

Our fiscal year 2009 was July 1, 2008 - June 30, 2009

Creating a network of preserved land

The Land Conservancy’s service region extends from Sandusky Bay to the Pennsylvania border, and from Cleveland’s lakefront to the farms of Wayne County.

In fiscal year 2009 alone, the Land Conservancy preserved property in seven of the 14 counties in its service region and protected land in Ashland County, a special project area. Nine of the 20 projects we completed in FY2009 involved public land; those public-land projects represented 66 percent of the total acreage preserved during the year.

The number of counties in which the Land Conservancy has preserved property is a reflection of our regional goal of helping to protect 400,000 acres throughout northern Ohio.

More acreage is preserved

In fiscal year 2009, the Land Conservancy preserved another 1,704 acres in northern Ohio. Over the past three years, we have preserved an average of approximately 2,500 acres annually. To put our pace of land-preservation in perspective, the entire 92-year-old Cleveland Metroparks system encompasses about 20,000 acres. That means the Land Conservancy is creating the acreage equivalent of a new Emerald Necklace every eight years.

The eight individual land conservancies that merged to form Western Reserve Land Conservancy in 2006 together protected about 8,000 acres over a 20-year period. In the three years since the merger, the Land Conservancy has already preserved another 7,400 acres – a 92-percent increase over a 20-year total.

Our goal is to have 400,000 acres – about 10 percent of the total amount of land in northern Ohio – permanently preserved, either by the Land Conservancy or one of our conservation partners. About half of that amount has already been protected.

Ten projects get public funding

The Land Conservancy continues to secure public funding for land-protection projects in northern Ohio. During fiscal year 2009, the Land Conservancy secured funding for 10 projects involving public dollars in the amount of $8,424,566 from eight separate sources.

The funding sources include state and federal grants plus local and private dollars linked to public funding projects. Sixty-five percent of the funding (about $5.5 million) came from state programs, while 24 percent (about $2 million) was secured from federal sources.

The largest single grants secured in FY2009 were state Water Resource Restoration Sponsor Program awards: $1,785,000 for the Upper Cuyahoga Bog Preserve in Portage County and $1,725,000 for Orchard Hills Park in Geauga and Lake counties. Public funding secured by the Land Conservancy – sometimes in the name of a county or local park district – remains a vital source for new parkland in the Western Reserve.