- Peak Season by Kate Kiesler - Artists Choice Award Winner
Easement Stewardship Day coming August 14th.
Easement Stewardship Day is coming August 14th. This is a great opportunity to get out on conserved properties and help the Land Trust monitor the conservation easements that we hold. Please scroll down for the details.
Art & Wildflower Celebration Update: Congratulations to local artist Kate Kiesler, winner of the Artists Choice Award, for "Peak Season," pictured here. Kate created this piece on July 17 during the wildflower hike at the Art & Wildflower Celebration.
Changes to Colorado's Conservation Tax Credit Program have recently been signed by Governor Ritter. See below for more information.
Find us on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/continental.divide.land.trust
Leigh's Blog can be found below, please scroll down.
Thank you for your support!
Continental Divide Land Trust
Art & Wildflower Celebration - a great weekend to enjoy the beauty of our community. Easement Stewardship Day and more....
The weather was perfect for the artists and wildflower lovers who came together the weekend of July 17 & 18 to celebrate the natural beauty of our community.
Thanks to participating artists: Kim Barrick, Tricia Bass, Leona Sophocles Brownson, Sandi Bruns, Donna Causland, Linda Dice, Barrett Edwards, Beth Erlund, Amy Evans, Timothy Faust, Joanne Hanson, Pam Herring, Joan Hilliard, Mary Lou Johns, Connie Johnson, Mark Johnson, Kate Kiesler, Debby McAllister, Diane Nims, Todd Powell, Marty Rhode, Carol Robinson, Carl Scofield, Gary Soles, Lisa Staggs, Ann Weaver, and Ginger Whellock.
A huge thank you goes out to:
Our Host Location: Buffalo Moutain Gallery
Our Sponsors: Alpine Bank, Neils Lunceford Landscape Design/Build, John D. Longhill Landscape Architecture, The Chris & Grant Kurtz Foundation, and Howard & Sue Carver.
Our Hike Leaders and their assistants: Marty Richardson and Pat Taylor, with help from Gail Culp, Charlotte Clarke, MJ Wurster and Sue Carver.
And all our great volunteers and food providers. Thank you all!
Saturday, August 14, Easement Stewardship Day. Volunteers are needed to help CDLT monitor the conservation easements we hold. The day starts with a training session to learn more about conservation easements and why and how we monitor them. The afternoon is spent in the field on an actual monitoring visit with a trained Land Steward. Lunch provided. Please sign up in advance.
The day starts at 9:15 a.m. in the Buffalo Mountain Room of the County Commons next to the Library in Frisco. We'll begin with a brief training session, then grab lunches and head into the field by 11:30 a.m. The length of the day depends on the property to be monitored, but plan on a day outside and bring appropriate gear and footwear, water, sunscreen and hat. Hiking requirement varies from easy to moderate.
Please sign up in advance by contacting Continental Divide Land Trust at 970-453-3875 or info@cdlt.org.
Altitude Gallery 20 for 20 Promo Continues All Summer: Altitude Gallery in Breckenridge and owner/photographer Timothy Faust is offering a 20% discount on any single photo purchase with just a $20 donation to CDLT, good anytime throughout the summer. Timothy specializes in landscapes and nature photography. Altitude Gallery is located at 107 N. Main Street, Breckenridge. Call 970-453-2192 or visit www.altitudegallery.com for directions or info.
Changes to Colorado's Conservation Tax Credit Program
Changes are coming to the Colorado’s Conservation Tax Credit program beginning with tax year 2011 and continuing through 2013.
Other recent changes to the program have already been implemented. In 2009, the state legislature required that all land trusts and government open space programs begin the process to be Certified in order to accept conservation easements for which a Colorado tax credit is claimed. As of January 1, 2010, Continental Divide Land Trust is Certified by the State of Colorado to accept and hold conservation easements, license #CE0026.
The Colorado Conservation Tax Credit provides significant tax benefits to a Colorado taxpayer who donates a conservation easement. The tax credits are also transferrable, allowing landowners to realize cash for their easement donation.
The generous Colorado tax credits for conservation will continue in 2011 through 2013, but new legislation (HB10-1197) caps the total amount of credits that will be granted in any one year to $26 million, with a total cap for the three years at $78 million. This will likely create a back-log of tax credit requests, so a wait-list will be implemented. For example, if a landowner donates a conservation easement in November 2011, but the credits for tax year 2011 have already been allocated, the landowner’s tax credit will be issued in 2012. It is possible that the full $78 million could be allotted well before the end of 2013 due to wait-list back ups.
The good news is that these new rules do not apply in 2010. Furthermore, the U.S. Congress is moving toward extending the generous Federal Tax benefits for conservation for another year, retroactive to January 1, 2010.
Other incentive programs for conservation are also available to landowners, such as wildlife habitat preservation, and sage grouse habitat improvements.
For more information on tax benefits, conservation easements, and an extensive FAQ section, please contact us or click on Land Matters on the left-side navigation panel.
Continental Divide Land Trust is your local non-governmental land conservancy group. We provide free consulting on land conservation options. Please give us a call or email if you have any questions or if you are considering a conservation easement. We’d like to hear from you.
Leigh's Blog - from the Executive Director
I was asked by The Summit Foundation to speak at the annual grant and scholarship awards ceremony in Breckenridge on June 30, 2010, as a representative of the Environmental group category. Here is the text of my presentation:
It is an honor to represent the environmental community today, especially on these longest days of summer when we all want to be outside enjoying our environment. It is the environment that brought us here and keeps us here, that brings the tourists and the vacation homeowners and the dollars.
The natural environment of Summit County is our most important economic driver. Without scenic beauty and large tracts of undeveloped land for discovery and renewal, without watersheds and wetlands, without abundant wildlife and wildflowers, we wouldn’t be here.
We wouldn’t be in this room celebrating The Summit Foundation and philanthropy and the many environmental groups that make Summit County such an outstanding place to live and visit. A wide variety of groups are working in our community to protect the environment – preserving water, minimizing waste, providing access to public lands, developing trail systems, and educating young people on the science of nature.
Continental Divide Land Trust works to protect open spaces and natural lands. We fill a unique niche in the environmental non-profit community here – we are eligible to hold conservation easements. We are qualified by the federal government and certified by the State of Colorado as a land conservancy. Conservation easements are a perpetual responsibility that we take very seriously. But we also have fun and offer educational events as well, because what good is protecting nature if you don’t take the time to appreciate and enjoy it.
In times of economic distress, the environment suffers as we seek to exploit natural resources in the name of economic development. And financial support to environmental groups declines as well.
This is where The Summit Foundation is so important. The funding is invaluable, but even more important is the leadership that The Summit Foundation provides. It sets a high bar for philanthropy in our community and we all benefit from being asked to be generous. The Summit Foundation has set up agency endowment funds and the Land Trust is a beneficiary of one of those. And The Summit Foundation is so helpful with resources, expertise and advice. We are truly blessed to have such an outstanding organization in our community.
Please don’t take the environment for granted. It is the golden goose laying golden eggs for our community. We all need to do our part to preserve it. And your philanthropic support of our environmental organizations today will pay great dividends for future generations.
From Julia Butterfly Hill (posted May 17, 2010):
"So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don't like, what we don't want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don't want, what we don't like, what we want to change.
"So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life. And I realized I didn't climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of 'connection' that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected."
Why I Love Mud Season (posted April 26, 2010):
Yesterday morning, when Breckenridge was blanketed with a fresh layer of snow and all the ugliness of litter and dog poop were hidden, the roads and parking lots were empty, the robins were singing, Breck Ski area was covered with snow and not a track to be seen to mar the perfect surface, I said to my sweetie as we walked the dogs "I love mud season."
I love the quiet, the lack of traffic. I love how you can actually see Breckenridge because there are no cars blocking views of the streetscape. I love how there is time to connect to friends I was too busy to spend time with during the season. I love how the pace slows down. I love how the only people who are here are the seasoned locals - not seasonal, but seasoned. I love being able to ski at the Basin then hike or bike the same day.
Mud season reminds me of what Breckenridge was like when I was a kid - much more quiet, many fewer people, slower paced than nowadays. It's a nostalgic time of year for me.
I love seeing nature come alive after a winter asleep under the snow. The birds start arriving from points south and I mark the arrival of the robin and the bluebird. The trees start budding then developing leaves, ever so slowly. The smallest sprouts of grasses become taller and taller. Wildflowers begin their journey of growth from base leaves to stem to bud to bloom. The first dandelion of the season is always a joy as it is the first flower.
We are in the midst of mud season now in the high country and it is one of my favorite times of year.
January 4, 2010
Wow, 2009 was a crazy year. We were so busy with events and our Certification application that I hardly had time to think about a blog toward the end of the year. I also lost my grandmother, Dodie Bingham, in October, which was a sad loss for me and my family. Dodie loved nature, birds and bugs, animals large and small, wind in the trees, the babble of a brook, and most especially her garden for which she became quite famous. I am grateful to her for imbuing in me, in her children, and in her many grandchildren, a similar love and appreciation for all things wild.
Posted September 1, 2009
No blog this month. We have 2 events, 5 grant applications, 14 easements to monitor, and all of our materials for Certification due by the end of the month!
Posted August 17, 2009
I've been thinking about weeds and wildflowers lately. Our rainy spring has made 2009 an outstanding year for wildflowers. But it has also made conditions outstanding for weeds as well. Our native wildflowers can't compete with invasive, noxious weeds and are losing ground all across our county. Our government entities, charged by the State of Colorado with noxious weed enforcement, are not doing enough to work with private landowners on weed eradication. Are there any others out there concerned about this? Let me know and we'll talk about what we can do.
Leigh’s Blog – Posted June 25, 2009
Most of my adult life I’ve been called a "tree hugger." While I love trees, they are a part of the whole. What I love most is the land and all the plants, birds, bugs, and animals that go with it. If I could hug the planet, I’d really be called an Earth Hugger.
So often we are called to save some part of what we love – a threatened trail, an endangered animal, a trampled plant. But land conservation allows us to embrace the whole. Without the land, we would have no trails to enjoy, no animals to cherish, no birds to watch, no flowers to sniff.
The Earth’s population is projected to reach 9 billion people by 2050. What is the hope for the land and all it supports on a planet with 9 billion people? Private land conservation is our best hope for the future. Private landowners are often the best stewards of the land. Conservation easements allow landowners to continue to own their land, manage and take care of it as they have done. Continental Divide Land Trust is here to work with landowners interested in land protection and conservation easements.
But you don’t need hundreds of acres to be a good land steward. In your own back yard or in planters on your deck you can create wildlife habitat to help support small critters, birds, and pollinators such as bees and butterflies that are so critical to the web of life.
In our mountain environment, it is easy to be a land steward by protecting the native vegetation already on your property, avoiding expanses of lawn, and planting native species that are both beautiful to you and beneficial to pollinators, such as penstemon and columbine. For more information, visit your locally operated garden supply store, or visit www.pollinator.org.
Posted May 10, 2009
My job as CDLT’s executive director provides me with many rich and unique opportunities. I’ve had the opportunity to hold baby goats at the Giberson Ranch, hike on properties that few people ever visit, and other experiences that I’d like to share with you.
Upon occasion, I’ll post my observations on the home page of CDLT’s website. I hope you’ll be a frequent visitor. Here is something to get us started:
Joni Mitchell’s song "Big Yellow Taxi" is a banner for the environmental movement, with the phrase "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot." But to me, the most significant lyric is the reminder: "you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone."
I’ve lived in Summit County for over 37 years, since I was a child, and I have seen a lot of changes. I’ve learned to appreciate the natural beauty of our community because I’ve seen first hand how quickly it can disappear, how threatened and fragile it is. But one aspect of our natural environment that I failed to appreciate until recently, because it was so ubiquitous, is our Lodgepole Pine forests. But you don’t know what you’ve got until you don’t have it anymore, so lately I have been especially appreciative of the underdog Lodgepole Pine tree.
For so many years, developers have justified cutting the forests by calling the unloved trees "dog hair lodgepole." Who cares about protecting these scrawny, boring trees? Well, me. Two of my favorite Lodgepole Pines are near Harris Street in Breckenridge. Actually one is no longer with us and the other is hanging in there.
Through most of the last century, a slender Lodgepole arched over old Harris Street at the intersection with Washington, like a graceful head gate announcing the entrance to a special place. It made it seem like this particular block of Breckenridge was protected and almost secret. Probably because it was feared that the tree would fall, it was cut down years ago. I still miss that tree. If anyone has a photo of it, I’d be happy to see it.
The other is located on Town of Breckenridge property behind an old barn. It is the only sizeable Lodgepole around and is a critical stopping off point for birds moving through the neighborhood from feeder to feeder.
Like any Lodgepole that is given room to grown, it is luscious and full, with branches reaching every which way. So far, it has escaped invasion by the pine beetle. It’s location near a drainage way giving it extra moisture, may save it from the pine beetle. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
I’m sure I’ll write more on lodgepoles. I’ve been a great admirer lately.
Posted May 10, 2009