The Conservation Almanac covers land area conservation activity across the United States from 1998-2005. The project grew out of the many requests The Trust for Public Land has received for data to understand the “context” for land conservation and the growing conservation finance movement. Elected officials, journalists, foundations and others want to know things like: * How much land has been protected in my state? * Which state and federal agencies have protected lands in the state? * With all the new money being created for land conservation, what kind of impact are we getting? * What policies and programs might help us make progress in reaching our conservation objectives? In the process of developing the Conservation Almanac, TPL has gathered data from hundreds of primary information sources and made every attempt to be accurate, comprehensive and thorough in our research. Given the scale and complexity of this undertaking, we are releasing the Almanac as a “work in progress” with the expectation that there will be opportunities for future improvement and updates. Please email us at [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions. What Elements are Included? 1. Total acres for each state, and acres that have been conserved within the state as of December 31, 2005; 2. Land conservation activity, both acres acquired (fee title and conservation easement) and dollars spent from 1998 through 2005 (Please refer to Methodology for a detailed explanation of our data calculations); 3. A detailed listing of LandVote conservation finance ballot measures; 4. A profile of the state’s land conservation programs; and 5. A discussion of the state’s policy framework that underpins land conservation. The Conservation Almanac includes a data analysis tool enabling the user to examine the underlying data and to generate custom reports for individual or multiple states. Specifically, the Conservation Almanac includes state achievements in land conservation-both overall and in the 1998 to 2005 time period-by relevant state agencies. To view State program and agency descriptions please navigate by state. Finally, there are several federal programs for land conservation that are not included in this iteration of the Conservation Almanac for reasons that include: 1. Data not in existence during the snapshot time period 2. Lack of reliable data 3. Not funded during the snapshot period. As the Conservation Almanac continues to develop and data collection across the country standardizes, efforts will be made to include data absent from this version. To understand the federal programs and agencies included in the Conservation Almanac please view the Federal program and agency descriptions.
