Catalog of Training

COURSES & WORKSHOPS:

Balancing Nature and Commerce in Communities that Neighbor Public Lands
The Balancing Nature and Commerce National Course brings together teams of public land managers and their neighboring community leaders for a week of face-to-face, one-on-one communication necessary to build trust and improve existing working relationships. The course consists of presentations, case studies, group discussions and team planning sessions throughout the week, focusing on topics such as community character, natural resources, economics, and partnership building. The course culminates with each team drafting an action plan for their community.

Basic Training with Land Trust Executive Directors
This course is designed especially for full-time executive directors of land trusts with no more than three staff members. Topics include: board development – assessing and building board effectiveness; fundraising essentials; strategic planning; financial management and accounting rules; effective board / staff relationships; and organizational policies for land protection and stewardship. This course is offered in partnership with the Land Trust Alliance.

NEW! Compatible Land Use Planning around Military Installations
As military installations face growing challenges related to encroachment and incompatible land uses at their borders, adjacent communities are confronted with the competing demands of rapid growth, limited potential for outward expansion, and striking a balance between economic development and environmental quality. These challenges can result in conflicts between military installations and their surrounding communities over what constitutes a “compatible” land use, polarized positions on shared issues, and ultimately a lack of trust. This course facilitates collaborative land use partnerships to proactively address potential encroachment issues.

Conservation Easements Stewardship
This course is designed for land conservationists responsible for conservation easement stewardship. It is also suitable for land protection staff, attorneys, and board members interested in better understanding the stewardship implications of conservation easement language. This course is offered in partnership with the Land Trust Alliance.

Conservation Options: The Land Protection Toolbox
Expanding on the Land Trust Alliance’s Conservation Options: A Landowner’s Guide, this course helps attendees better understand how specific techniques are best applied to land protection projects. The course also helps demystify title evaluations and appraisals, emphasizes records management, sets the stage for sound stewardship after the deal is closed, and reviews the applicable Standards & Practices for Land Trusts.

Conserving Land with Conservation Easements
This course reviews conservation easements used today by land trusts and government agencies with special emphasis on how easements should be designed to achieve their conservation objectives and insure their long-term viability. Planning, legal, and financial issues related to conservation easements are also discussed. This course is offered in partnership with the Land Trust Alliance.

NEW! Diversity & Conservation: A New Model for the 21st Century
This introductory diversity and conservation pilot course provides participants with an understanding of what diversity is and what is means as a business and social imperative to the conservation movement.

NEW! GIS Tools for Strategic Conservation Planning
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center and The Conservation Fund offer this course to teach students how to apply GIS tools, methodologies, and analyses to strategic conservation planning using a “Green Infrastructure” approach.

NEW! Mitigation Banking Interagency Review Teams (MBIRT)
This course will address both the technical aspects of all policies, guidance documents and regulations pertaining to the creation, use, and maintenance of mitigation banks, and will also address the leadership components of serving on a MBIRT. Through case studies and applied exercises, students will have the opportunity to test their consensus-building skills, to understand what it means to chair a working group, and how to professionally establish boundaries while serving on a team. This will be a unique class that marries the technical knowledge upon which environmentally sound decisions are made with the actual leadership skills necessary for achieving effective decision-making.

Strategic Conservation Planning Using a Green Infrastructure Approach
This introductory course provides participants with a strategic approach for prioritizing conservation opportunities and a planning framework for conservation and development – integrating the green and the grey. Through hands-on class projects, lectures, case studies, and a local field trip, participants will experience firsthand how the green infrastructure approach can be used to connect environmental, social, and economic health across urban, suburban, and rural settings. Participants will also learn how green infrastructure planning can serve as a tool to inform land use decisions and build consensus among diverse interests.

The Practice of Environmentally Sensitive Development
Through lecture, case studies and class exercises, this course provides "why" and "how-to" advice to members of the development community and others interested in practical, cost-effective ways to apply the principles and techniques of environmentally sensitive development to the real-estate industry. The course is designed to provide knowledge and tools needed to plan and market conservation developments that are both environmentally suitable and financially profitable. This curriculum is also offered as an 8-week online course.

Strong Organizations: Fundraising and Stewardship Costs
This course will cover Ethical Fundraising for Land Trusts (pilot), Determining Stewardship Costs & Raising and Managing Dedicated Funds and small portion of Land Trust Boards: Preparing for Perpetuity.You will learn how to calculate the full stewardship expenses of conservation easements and fee land transactions; present and/or anticipated future staff costs; potential enforcement/defense costs for conservation easement holdings; and any necessary legal or technical advice.

Vision and Values with Peter Forbes
Over two-and-a-half days, participants will explore and develop a greater understanding of the role of land in shaping healthy and prosperous human communities. They will consider new theories of how broad societal change occurs, and will be introduced to Measures of Health, a tool that will help them create the most positive change possible in the communities and organizations they serve. Measures of Health is the first community-based standard on the ethics and ecology of healthy, whole communities.

Water Reuse for Intensive Fish Culture
This four-and-a-half day course presented by The Conservation Fund Freshwater Institute will cover the fundamentals of design and management of water reuse systems. Staff from the Freshwater Institute (Shepherdstown, WV) will teach the course. The Freshwater Institute will be the site of lab activities for the course. The Freshwater Institute is a state-of-the-art fish culture facility based on system design concepts covered in the course.

NEW! Wildland Urban Interface & Green Infrastructure
This introductory course provides participants with a strategic approach for prioritizing conservation opportunities and a planning framework for conservation and development that focuses on wildland urban interface.

All course offerings can be modified for place-based offerings in your region. See the CLN Services page for more information.

DISTANCE LEARNING OFFERINGS:

How to Start a Sustainable Tourism Program Broadcast
This two-hour live broadcast sponsored by The Conservation Fund will feature national tourism experts describing various methods and approaches for starting a sustainable tourism project at varying geographic scales. Through case studies, they will highlight the actual steps involved in establishing these projects, from the initial conversations and ideas through the step by step actions to the point where the project begins to produce results! Participants will hear on-the-ground practical advice for starting a sustainable tourism project and will have the opportunity to call-in and seek advice from these national experts.

Building Partnerships Satellite Workshop
This 3 hour broadcast focuses on partnerships between local, regional, federal and non-governmental entities, and features Edward T. McMahon, formerly vice president of The Conservation Fund and Linda Dahl, Director of National Park Service’s Gateway and Regional Planning Group, along with community experts and public agency representatives. During the workshop, participants have an opportunity to interact with workshop experts and with participants from other gateway communities.

Keys to Success in Communities that Neighbor Public Lands Broadcast
This 3 hour introductory workshop focuses on the issues facing communities that neighbor public lands and tools these communities can use to preserve their community character while maintaining a thriving economy and healthy environment. This interactive broadcast features Edward T. McMahon, formerly Vice President of The Conservation Fund.

The Practice of Environmentally Sensitive Development ONLINE Course
Through lecture, case studies and class exercises, this course provides "why" and "how-to" advice to members of the development community and others interested in practical, cost-effective ways to apply the principles and techniques of environmentally sensitive development to the real-estate industry. The course is designed to provide knowledge and tools needed to plan and market conservation developments that are both environmentally suitable and financially profitable. This curriculum is also offered as an intensive 2-day workshop.