The Maryland Land Trust Alliance

Maryland is home to over fifty local land trusts. Land trusts are not-for-profit corporations designed to protect land from development, using conservation easements, gifts or purchases of land, limited development, conservation buyers, or promotion of existing local, state, or Federal easement programs. The Maryland Environmental Trust (MET) assists citizen groups in the formation and operation of local land trusts by offering training, technical assistance, administrative grants and real estate acquisition loans, through membership in the Maryland Land Trust Alliance (MLTA), an informal association of national, state, regional and local land conservation organizations working in Maryland.

The MET Local Land Trust Assistance Program provides grants to local land trusts for administrative expenses. Funded by the Coastal Zone Management Program in the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Local Land Trust Assistance Program offers land trusts with cooperative agreements with MET the following technical assistance, training, funding and cooperative land management services:

• *The Biophilia Foundation encourages the restoration and permanent protection of wildlife habit, and to that end has created the "Conserve Habitat Incentive Program" administered by the Maryland Environmental Trust (MET). This program offers up to $10,000 to local land trusts per habitat conservation project. All completed projects would include habitat restoration and permanent land protection such as a CREP easement or donated conservation easement. Some projects would involve the acquisition of new land/easements; other might build more habitat conservation into existing easements through amending in new provisions.
  
  Example Projects (PDF)
  
  Download Application (PDF)
• technical and legal assistance in starting a land trust, including organizing a board of directors, drafting articles of incorporation and by-laws, filing for tax-exempt status, record keeping, establishing conservation strategies and criteria, and other formation tasks;
• training for directors and staff in operating a land conservation organization and conducting land protection transactions; including Maryland-wide and Mid-Atlantic regional conferences;
• holding conservation easements jointly with land trusts as Co-Grantee, allowing property owners who donate easements to both trusts to be eligible for all benefits available to MET donors; land trusts would also receive monitoring and enforcement assistance for these easements from MET and DNR's Office of the Attorney General; the cooperative agreement is also a legal requirement for participation in Maryland's Rural Legacy Program;
• administrative grants from the Janice Hollmann Administrative Grant Fund, for staff, office expenses, publications, landowner outreach, land transaction costs and other needs
• zero-interest loans for land acquisition, easement purchase and other land protection transactions, from the Land Trust Grant Fund, a revolving fund established by Section 3-2A of the Natural Resources Code, and
• technical assistance publications, including MET's Land Trust Assistance Manual, standard easement processing forms, model easement documents, and an education video on conservation easements for landowners.