Colorado Open Lands
Land Protection Fellowship Program
The first of its kind nationally, the Land Protection Fellowship Program is a highly coveted training and leadership development program that provides unique, hands-on training in land conservation techniques for professionals who will become tomorrow’s conservation leaders. (Read the associated newsletter article on the fellowship program.)
The demand for skilled conservation real estate professionals consistently exceeds the supply. Few formal academic programs exist to provide such training and the only way to obtain these skills is through on-the-job experience. At the end of their two-year Fellowship with Colorado Open Lands, these individuals have the experience necessary to help meet this need, whether in Colorado or elsewhere in the country.
The purpose of the Land Protection Fellowship Program is to provide each Fellow with the vital skills necessary to complete specialized, complex, and highly personal conservation real estate transactions in an effective manner. By combining intensive, experiential training with daily mentoring opportunities, Colorado Open Lands is training tomorrow’s land conservation leaders in a unique learning process.
As a result, each highly trained graduate comes out of the program capable of protecting more land, in a more efficient manner, at a more effective cost. In this way, we are protecting vital natural and agricultural resources in Colorado, while also providing a unique educational experience.
Each graduate leaves the Program with a repertoire of skills such as real estate expertise, fundraising proficiency, negotiation skills, partnership-building techniques, and expanded communication abilities.
What does a Fellow actually do?
Fellows are heavily involved in all of Colorado Open Lands’ programs and activities. Working at a grassroots level, the Fellows help provide many of the key components of a comprehensive "hands-on" approach to community conservation.
On any given day, Fellows can be found meeting with a landowner to discuss tailoring the terms of a conservation easement to that family’s property, drafting an article for our newsletter, writing a grant proposal to purchase a conservation easement, participating in our annual planning, monitoring a conserved property, or on the phone with a community partner.
After two years, Fellows leave the Program with considerable training in community-oriented land conservation techniques that not only makes them more qualified candidates for local government and land trust staff positions but also helps ensure the protection of the natural heritage that Colorado and this country are blessed with. Skills Fellows gain include:
- Community outreach and fundraising
- Landowner negotiations
- Innovative conservation real estate techniques
- Due diligence review and real estate basics
- Conservation easement appraisal basics
- Fundraising at community, regional, state and national levels
- Working with established and non-traditional community leaders
- Developing and strengthening community-based partnerships
The Land Protection Fellowship Program also allows Colorado Open Lands to expand its community conservation efforts by placing Fellows into communities where we are focusing our efforts, thus leveraging our land protection expertise over a broad geographical area.
Due to the effectiveness of our training, we have completed twice the number of projects in one-third of the time since initiating our Fellowship program, and graduated eight Fellows into competitive positions in the land conservation field.
Program Successes
The impact and success of this program continues to exceed our expectations, protecting vital landscapes, attracting land protection dollars from many different sources, and training future land protection leaders in the art of community conservation.
In the past three years, the Program has:
- Placed conservation professionals on the ground in five Colorado communities,
- Completed 21 conservation projects protecting over 24,000 acres of productive farm and ranch land, riparian areas, critical wildlife habitat, and high-impact scenic views,
- Obtained over $3.3 million in new land acquisition funds,
- Partnered with the Gunnison Ranchland Legacy, Mesa Land Conservancy, Park County, Pikes Peak Community Foundation, the Wet Mountain Open Space Coalition and The Nature Conservancy on eighteen different land conservation projects,
- Provided land conservation services to the Town of Berthoud, the Cities of Fountain and Colorado Springs, Colorado State Parks, and Park County,
- Launched a collaborative, landscape-scale initiative withDucks Unlimited, Centennial Land Trust, the City of Fort Morgan, the South Platte Wetlands Focus Area Committee, Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund, the Colorado Division of Wildlife, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and a rapidly growing number of landowners along the South Platte River Corridor to strategically advance efforts that will address loss of critical riparian habitat and ways to support the sustainability of the local agricultural economy,
- Begun implementing our Peak to Prairie Regional Conservation Plan funded by a planning grant from Great Outdoors Colorado. In partnership with El Paso and Pueblo Counties, The Nature Conservancy, the Pikes Peak Community Foundation and the Department of Defense, this Peak to Prairie project will knit together a series of public and private protected lands possessing scenic, recreational, agricultural and ecological value, to preserve one of the last intact grasslands that is ecologically functional, but increasingly threatened, along Colorado’s Front Range,
- Drafted vision plans for the keep it Colorado initiative, and
- Begun implementing a $4.75 million Legacy grant from GOCO
Brown Bag Lunches
In addition to hands-on training opportunities and experience through landowner negotiations, grant-writing, and due diligence review, the Fellowship Program includes a series of brown bag lunches with various professionals and consultants in the land conservation field with whom we sometimes work. Lunch speakers and their topics over the Program’s history have included:
- Allan Beezley; attorney (legal aspects of conservation easements),
- Tessa Goldhamer; attorney (title work and due diligence),
- Chris Hermann; Former Western Region Director, Land Trust Alliance (non-profit Board development),
- Jeff Hindman; former Mayor Pro-tem, Town of Berthoud Board of Trustees (local government participation in land preservation),
- Tandy Jones, Ginny Ades; Mountain Area Land Trust (community fundraising),
- Larry Kueter; attorney, Isaacson Rosenbaum P.C. (estate planning),
- Jonathan Moore; Conservation Specialist, Former COL Director of Land Protection (conservation development),
- Susan Dorsey Otis; Executive Director, Yampa Valley Land Conservancy (local land trust experiences),
- John Parr; Principal, Center for Regional and Neighborhood Action (community organizer),
- Scott Pieratt; Geologist (mineral rights assessments),
- Dan Pike; President, Colorado Open Lands (real estate basics),
- Doug Robinson; Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (local land trust experiences),
- Charlie Russell; CA Russell Partners (media and PR consultants),
- Eric Simons; Distributed Generation Systems (wind energy), and
- Anne Wilkinson; appraiser, Hunsperger and Weston (appraising conservation easements).
These speakers have provided tremendous insight into each of their areas of expertise, humor, and most importantly, how their work relates to Colorado Open Lands’ efforts. We would like to extend a big “Thank You” to all of them!! Speakers not only enlighten the Fellows, but the rest of the staff as well.
Where Are They Today?
This training has allowed Fellows to go on to work for national organizations such as Trust for Public Land, Ducks Unlimited and Boulder County Open Space. Graduates who initially worked for these organizations have moved on to other positions such as Director of Land Protection for the New Mexico Land Conservation Collaborative (and later, the Executive Director of the New Mexico Land Conservancy); first Executive Director of the Colorado Water Trust, (most recently the Western Field Representative for the Orton Family Foundation); and the National Park Service. Another Fellowship Program graduate went on to gain a law degree in Environmental Law.
Four of our other graduates are permanent staff at Colorado Open Lands, working as Director of Conservation Operations, Land Protection Specialist, Program Area Manager, and Development Coordinator.
Clearly, our Fellows are prepared to take on leadership positions with land conservation organizations anywhere in the country. Colorado Open Lands’ Fellowship Program truly is a national program that positively impacts the conservation community at every level.
For an in-depth look at our current Fellowship Program Graduates, please look here.
Funding for this program has been generously provided by the Bacon Family Foundation, Ludlow-Griffith Foundation, Colorado Conservation Trust, Great Outdoors Colorado, Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation, Stryker Short Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation, among others.