Funding and Financing for Natural Asset Management
From planning and partnerships to fundraising and long-term stewardship, protecting ecosystems and clean water in your community takes a lot of hard work. It can take a lot of money, too.
While there are multiple programs at all levels of government that can provide the funding support you need, they can be hard to find. This can mean that important work is delayed or not done at all.
This tool is meant to provide project advocates with a place to find some of the most important funding programs for protecting environmental benefits in our region. Below, you will find information about what these programs are, how they are administered and how you might take the first steps toward securing funding, building partnerships and getting good work done.
Funding Tool Scenarios
Community Conservation
So often, communities come to love greenspaces that are unprotected. These can be the last patch of forest in an urban corridor, a stretch of gravel beach on a river bank perfect for fishing or a scrubby prairie full of birds and butterflies. When these places come under threat, very few people know where to turn to find the resources to protect these places so that the things that the community loves about them are protected forever.
Often, these places need to be bought by a community-based organization or a local government, or, they can be protected with a tool like a conservation easement.
After you talk with your neighbors and other community stakeholders, if these kinds of protections seem right for your project, look at the funding options for fee acquisition or conservation easements using the tool.
Landowner Legacy
Landowners have the unique opportunity to protect the things they love most about their properties forever. They can do this by keeping the land private and selling or donating a conservation easement to a land trust or local government, or, they can sell or deed their land to a conservation organization to manage it in the future.
If you are a landowner and want to protect the conservation values on your property, search the options in the tool and get in touch with a local land trust or your local government to find out what works best for you and your needs.
Manage for More
Our working lands are vital for producing the things that sustain us. These lands can also be essential to protecting healthy wildlife habitat and fighting climate change. However, finding the resources to change management practices for farms and forests to do things like protect soils, store more carbon and keep streams clean can be daunting.
If you are looking to change your management practices, explore the stewardship funding options using the tool.
