Hudson Valley Land Trusts Receive $25K Each

MID HUDSON VALLEY, NY — Four land trusts from the Hudson Valley area are among the 13 recipients out of 52 applicants from The Nature Conservancy’s second annual Resilient and Connected Network Grant Program.

The purpose of the funding is to engage land trust partners to increase the pace and scale of protecting places where animals and plants can thrive in changing climate conditions, according to the global organization.

The Dutchess Land Conservancy, the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, the Mohonk Preserve and the Westchester Land Trust were among the recipients, which will receive $25,000 each for their conservation projects, the conservation group said.

“The Nature Conservancy in New York’s Resilient and Connected Network Grant Program deepens our efforts to work with land trust partners to respond to the urgent climate threats we’re facing,” Stuart F. Gruskin, chief conservation and external affairs officer of The Nature Conservancy in New York, said in a statement. “This is future-focused conservation. We’re co-investing with other land trusts and leveraging efforts to benefit people and nature as the climate continues to change.”

By protecting the Empire State’s climate-resilient lands and waters, the organizations are not only saving the future of plants and animals, but also maintaining safe drinking water and air quality for people who live in different communities, according to The Nature Conservancy.

The Hudson Highlands Land Trust will to toward the acquisition of a 44-acre property that adds to the property’s 400-acre Granite Mountain Preserve, which the trust has spent years working to piece together in Putnam county, May Yeung, a spokeswoman for the organization, told Patch via email.

The Monhonk Preserve grant will go toward supporting the development of a
Climate Adaptive Forest Management Plan for 1,000-acres of forest within the preserve, Yeung said.

The Westchester Land Trust will contribute toward the acquisition of a 174-acre property in Putnam County, which adjoins and will be added to the 730-acre property Cranberry Mountain Wildlife Management Area, operated by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservancy, she added.

The 2022 grant recipients are:

• Columbia Land Conservancy
• Dutchess Land Conservancy
• Finger Lakes Land Trust
• Genesee Valley Conservancy
• Hudson Highlands Land Trust
• Lake George Land Conservancy
• Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy
• Mohonk Preserve
• Northeast Wilderness Trust
• Rensselaer Plateau Alliance
• Thousand Islands Land Trust
• Westchester Land Trust
• Western New York Land Conservancy

This year the conservancy’s project team in New York included equity values in the program design to ensure that the ways in which people and communities could benefit were considered.

That included sustainable economic development, working with new or nontraditional partners, and projects that support vulnerable communities, according to the conservancy. The projects funded by the grant program all identified benefits provided by nature to people, and over two-thirds of applicants specified access, engagement with low-income communities and/or communities of color, or education as project outcomes.