Sand county foundation

Sand County Foundation, located in Monona, Wis., is a non-profit private land conservation organization formed in 1965. Its work is inspired by world-renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold’s land management philosophy.

Mission
Sand County Foundation’s mission is to advance the use of ethical and scientifically sound land management practices and partnerships for the benefit of people and the ecological landscape.

History
It was a friendship between two men, neighboring landowners, in a weed-strewn sandy area in south central Wisconsin. These friends talked about their ideas on life, held some common beliefs, and shared a love of the land. One of these men was a Madison business owner, Tom Coleman, the other Aldo Leopold.

It was on this spent piece of land that Aldo Leopold would write A Sand County Almanac and share his conviction about a land ethic with a larger audience than just his friend, Tom.
In September 1965, Reed Coleman, Tom's son and Estella Leopold's godson, his friends Howard Mead, and Frank Terbilcox formed Sand County Foundation.

They were witnessing the encroachment by lot development along the Wisconsin River, so they went out and enlisted the neighboring landowners to create a living memorial by preserving the Aldo Leopold Shack property, where Leopold did his writing and research. They further convinced the other landowners to allow the Foundation to do research and restoration in order to conserve the land as an integral unit.

Today, the role of Sand County Foundation has expanded from caretaker of the Leopold Memorial Reserve to advising the managers of hundreds of thousands of acres of land in several countries.

Programs
Community Based Conservation Network (CBCN)
Sand County Foundation defines Community Based Conservation as the following:
A process by which landholders gain access and use rights to, or ownership of, natural resources; collaboratively and transparently plan and participate in the management of resource use; and achieve financial and other benefits from their stewardship.

The intellectual basis for Community Based Conservation emerged out of the African experience. There, fledgling constitutional democracies endowed local communities with specific rights over natural resources. Some important conservation successes are recorded where relatively weak central governments encouraged villages or private land holders to develop commercial use of forests and wildlife. In North America, we are just now beginning to see examples of community-led enterprise development in rural areas. Where central government has offered flexible regulatory environments, local citizens have found ways to use resources sustainably while achieving protection of environmental values.

Landholder Leaders
The focus of Sand County Foundation’s Landholder Leaders Program is to provide recognition, assistance, and support to individual landowners who are voluntarily enhancing the conservation value of their land. Under this program, Sand County Foundation delivers services and support to private individuals through two different projects:

Leopold Conservation Award (LCA) - Sand County Foundation presents its Leopold Conservation Award to private landowners who translate their love for the land into responsible stewardship and management.

Leopold Conservation Awards recognize extraordinary achievement in voluntary conservation, inspire other landowners, and help the general public understand the role private landowners play in conservation.

Leopold Stewardship Fund - The Leopold Stewardship Fund provides incentives for private landowners who improve habitat on their own land for imperiled species. The resources of the Leopold Stewardship Fund provide direct grants to landowners for securing professional assistance in planning and implementing scientifically sound conservation actions, for undertaking specific actions beneficial to imperiled species, and for complying with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Leopold Memorial Reserve (LMR)
Aldo Leopold, forester and wildlife ecologist, purchased an abandoned property on the banks of the Wisconsin River in 1935. On some of the least promising of lands but with some of the most stirring of results, he initiated a land-use recovery there from unprofitable farming to private land protection, wildlife management, and habitat rehabilitation.

When subdivision of floodplain lands close to Leopold’s “Shack” was starting to destroy in the early 1960s what Leopold had initiated, Reed Coleman, Leopold’s godson, along with a few friends and neighbors, took private action. They forged a voluntary alliance of neighboring landowners. Together they created the Leopold Memorial Reserve.

Today, this early land trust, located in Sauk County in south central Wisconsin, comprises about 1,900-acres of private land. The Reserve represents a cooperative partnership between Sand County Foundation and other private landowners in and around the original Aldo Leopold farm and “Shack” written about in A Sand County Almanac.

Sand County Foundation coordinates Reserve-wide management and landscape ecological research. For nearly forty years the various habitats on the Reserve’s private lands have been dedicated to conservation improvement. The lands are heavily used for landowner enjoyment, support of peer-reviewed quality research, long-term monitoring of savannas and grasslands, understanding of floodplain ecology, and support of incentive-based effort to improve the deer herd and its habitat.

Bradley Fund for the Environment
The Bradley Fund for the Environment is a partnership between Sand County Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The partnership allows the Bradley Foundation to express their values and ideals in the environmental arena while avoiding the need to build internal staff capacity to administer and report on those grants.

The Fund is intended to foster science-based environmental programs as possible solutions to major problems. Proposals that emphasize private responsibility, create sustaining partnerships and integrate habitat improvement with human considerations are solicited by Sand County Foundation on behalf of the Bradley Foundation.

Pioneering Solutions
Sand County Foundation uses its Pioneering Solutions arena to construct, test, improve, and replicate new approaches (tools) to improve health of the land. The Foundation seeks means that are within the grasp of landholders’ financial capacity, as well as those that will provide reward to landholders who build upon Aldo Leopold’s call for a land ethic.

Examples of Pioneering Solutions the Foundation has currently underway include:

Agricultural Incentives - Incentives through a market-based approach to assist farmers in lowering nutrient discharge from their working lands while improving profitability. This is supported by a number of funding and agency partners and is being deployed throughout the upper Midwest.

This project recently received the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Gulf Guardian Award in the Civic/Non-profit category.

Floodplain Rehabilitation - Rehabilitation of river floodplains by exercise of private rights to property. Sand County Foundation was involved in the restoration of Wisconsin's Baraboo River.

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