The Private Landowner Network was created in 2001 by RFF as the first, and remains today, the only national resource on the internet specifically designed to address the needs of private landowners and the symbiotic businesses dependent on the private landowner market. The tools and information resources on PLN provide a simple and effective means for landowners to connect with qualified, often local, professionals to navigate the complex ins and outs of real estate transactions, tax and estate planning and land conservation. It enables landowners to access local land trusts and nonprofit conservation organizations, as well as the array of federal and state financing and technical assistance options.

PLN will continue to grow and answer the call of the private landowner conservation community by providing direct access to the most current list of qualified conservation professionals, organizations, and financial resources on the Internet.

The support of our donors is essential to maintain a future for PLN. Our knowledge of the conservation landscape and feedback we have received from professionals on the ground, both in the private and public sectors, have convinced us that PLN is an essential component of the future of private landowner conservation in America today. PLN has also become the leading national database and principal information store providing information on the protection of habitats and maintenance of bio-diversity through multi-tiered land conservation transactions Please support this segment of land conservation by supporting PLN.

 
The Conservation Tax Center was designed as a companion site to PLN. The CTC organizes articles in accordance with landowner and professional needs, provides listings and contact information for over 700 lawyers and estate planners nationwide, and links landowners to information, eligibility requirements, forms, and technical assistance to federal and state tax incentives for conservation. In the coming months, the site will also feature tax tools and calculators, simplifying the process for landowners as they complete their conservation transactions.

 
The Maine State Conservation Center is a website designed to assist Maine landowners in their conservation efforts. You will find a comprehensive menu of programs, services, professionals, articles, tools, and an interactive thematic mapping program to help you steward your land effectively. The website is also designed to support those sustainably managing Maine’s natural resources and open space, like local farmers and alternative energy retailers.

 
In August 2004, President Bush signed an Executive Order titled “Facilitation of Cooperative Conservation” which directs federal agencies to promote cooperative conservation, with an emphasis on appropriate inclusion of local participation in Federal decision-making. “I have directed Federal agencies to promote cooperative conservation in full partnership with states, local governments, tribes, and individuals.” George W. Bush

A result of the executive order was a national conference on cooperative conservation. The 2005 White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation (WHCCC) was held in St. Louis on August 29-31 2005.

RFF had a pivotal role in the success of the conference with the development of the case study collection database and website. RFF has donated the resources and time for the development and hosting of www.CooperativeConservationAmerica.org the official case study website and database of the WHCCC. RFF staff was solely responsible for the creation of the website and development of the database that includes the case study data entry tool, search engine and quality control administration utility.

Over the summer people from around the country have entered over 850 case studies into the database, which is hosted on RFF’s server. This database was also used as the content source for the WHCCC compendium document Faces and Places of Cooperative Conservation which is available for download on the website www.CooperativeConservationAmerica.org.

 
Hurricane Katrina caused the largest single devastation of forests in our nation's history. According the the USDA Forest Service, Hurricane Katrina damaged 5 million acres, 4 million of those were in Mississippi alone, and most of it on private lands. This Represents 19 billion board feet of timber with a value of $5 billion. This is enough timber to build 800,000 homes and make 25 million tons of paper and paperboard.

Much of the downed timber is now worthless due to splintering of the logs and degradation of the wood structure. Experience with Hurricanes Ivan and Hugo suggest that only about 1/3 of the downed timber will be salvageable; that will only partially defray the costs of clearing, site preparation and replanting.

Hurricane Katrina was a lifetime disaster for forest landowners. Many financial assistance programs and reforestation programs have been put in place in the past couple of years by federal (primarily the U.S. Department of Agriculture), and state agencies.

State and federal tax credits have also been put in place to assist forest landowners. We built the Katrina Reforestation Outreach Program website to bring these assistance programs to them. The financial assistance and individual tax credits are real money.

261 counties in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi were declared primary presidential or secretarial disaster areas in 2005 due to the hurricanes. We have compiled databases of assistance programs, registered foresters, consultants, seedling suppliers, and nurseries to help forest landowners connect with the resources they need to begin the recovery process.

 
The goals of Resources First Foundation's Save a Ranch program are two fold. The first is the Adopt an Acre effort which is designed to simply raise money to help the agricultural land trusts in the West for the purchase of conservation easements on working ranches.

The second is to educate folks on the many challenges and benefits that western ranches have. There are numerous environmental, economic and cultural benefits that a working ranch brings to a community, state and wildlife habitat. As you well know, ranches are under major pressures from development and taxes, this in turn threatens local economies, wildlife habitat, the health of the land, and the lives of the hard working individuals that steward the land through their operations.

 
RFF supports a portfolio of community-based conservation and education projects in South African countries, including:

Children in the Wilderness – Southern Africa

A project to bring children from the rural areas surrounding Wilderness Safaris camps and provide them with the opportunity to learn more about the wildlife and also to help teach them new life skills. In December camp Vumbura in Botswana’s Okavango Delta shut down to paying gueast and invited children from local communities free of charge for one week at a time.

Simonga Village – Zambia

This grant supports several small projects including - providing scholarships for 350 children in the local primary school and 19 scholarships for students at high school to further their education; the provision and purification of fresh water for the village; and the temporary premises are being organized to house a small clinic for the local population.

Wilderness Safaris Wildlife Trust – Southern Africa

In terms of the Deed of Trust the Wilderness Safaris Wildlife Trust was formed for the following purposes:

to engage in and promote nature conservation;

to engage in and promote animal protection activities;

to engage in and promote environmental protection activities and related community education and upliftment programs.

 
Conservation of marine and anadromous fisheries such as salmon, sea trout, shad, sturgeon, and striped bass as well as sea turtles and marine animals.

RFF supports the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF). NASF is a coalition of voluntary conservation groups who have come together to restore stocks of wild Atlantic salmon to their historic abundance.

NASF chairman Orri Vigfússon declared: "Thanks to NASF and the very good sense of Greenland's commercial fishermen there will now be no commercial salmon fishing on the high seas anywhere in the North Atlantic this year."

The agreement, under which the islanders are compensated for giving up their rights to catch salmon in the seas off Greenland, will protect wild salmon of all sizes. It is particularly important for anglers because this is the main feeding area of the salmon that used to provide rod fishermen with their greatest challenge. The seas off Greenland are the place where migrating salmon stay longest and reach their greatest weights before returning to their home rivers.

The last two years have seen improved salmon runs in many rivers in the face of scientific predictions of reduced numbers of the bigger fish that spend two or more winters feeding at sea. In contrast to the steady decline of recent decades record numbers of salmon returned to Iceland, Scotland, Canada and Northern Ireland in 2004, thanks to NASF agreements.