Three Michigan Land Conservancies Accepted into Advancement Program
Congratulations Cadillac Area Land Conservancy, HeadWaters Land Conservancy, and the Land Conservancy of West Michigan!
October 27, 2009
By Heart of the Lakes
www.heartofthelakes.orgThis September, Cadillac Area Land Conservancy, HeadWaters Land Conservancy, and the Land Conservancy of West Michigan were accepted into the second year of the Advancing Conservancy Excellence (ACE) program, bringing the total number of participants to eighteen in the three-year, $1 million initiative to strengthen the conservancy community in Michigan.
Launched in 2008, ACE is a partnership between Heart of the Lakes Center for Land Conservation Policy and the Land Trust Alliance. To be accepted into the competitive program, conservancies must demonstrate their capacity for participation and likelihood to have a significant conservation impact within their service areas. Access to technical training, organizational assessments, mentoring, and advancement grants are just some of the benefits for conservancies accepted into the ACE program.
The driver for ACE is to help position conservancies for national accreditation, itself a rigorous process of measuring a conservancy’s compliance with national standards of excellence. To date, four Michigan conservancies have been accredited: Chikaming Open Lands, Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (see box below), Leelanau Conservancy, and Legacy Land Conservancy.
“The conservancies participating in ACE are committed to increasing both the pace and quality of their critical conservation work,” said Rachel Kuntzsch, Executive Director of Heart of the Lakes. “They protect natural, scenic and working farms and forests that are essential to Michigan’s economy and quality of life, and the ACE program will help them achieve even higher levels of effectiveness.”
In addition to the Cadillac Area Land Conservancy, HeadWaters Land Conservancy, and Land Conservancy of West Michigan, the other ACE participants include:
Chippewa Watershed Conservancy
Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy
Keweenaw Land Trust
Leelanau Conservancy
Legacy Land Conservancy
Little Forks Conservancy
Little Traverse Conservancy
Livingston Land Conservancy
Michigan Nature Association
Mid Michigan Land Conservancy
North Oakland Headwaters Land Conservancy
Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy
Six Rivers Regional Land Conservancy
Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy
Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy
