Endowment Commitment to Working Landscapes Basis of First RFP for 2009

The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) today announced its latest “Request for Pre-Proposals (RFP).”  “For almost a year we’ve been working with land conservation interests in government and not-for-profit sectors to define the possibilities and potential of a single national database to view lands covered by conservation easements,” said Endowment President Carlton Owen.  “This is the third step in what we hope will be an exciting new way to access and view all pieces of the nation’s conservation landscape,” he continued.   This RFP seeks to determine means and costs for “Developing, Implementing and Sustaining a National Conservation Easement Database.”  (to view click here).  The RFP opens immediately and will close on February 1, 2009.

Publicly-owned lands within a given watershed, county or state are often depicted on maps as “green” areas, signifying their conservation status.  Conservation easements, which also serve to protect certain public aspects of private lands, are held by literally hundreds of different organizations from federal agencies to local land trusts and are rarely available to anyone beyond the organization holding the easement.  To aid in better directing economic development and to better target conservation investments – especially as relates to retention of working landscapes — it is vitally important that these disparate sets of information be accessible at useful scales and in a holistic manner.  In February 2008 the Endowment convened a workshop in Washington, DC to scope the need and interest in the topic (“Forest Conservation Easements:  Who’s Keeping Track?” (to view click here) That step was followed by a more in-depth study that led to a recently-released report entitled, “Considerations for Creating a National Conservation Easement Database.”