Deadline: 9-Sep-20
Launched with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Pacific Northwest Resilient Landscapes Initiative permanently protects lands in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington that can preserve biodiversity, durable wildlife habitat and functional migration corridors as the climate changes.
The Initiative is a partnership of three community foundations — Oregon Community Foundation, Seattle Foundation, and Idaho Community Foundation — with the Land Trust Alliance and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has seeded a land capital fund, housed at the Oregon Community Foundation, with $4 million. The three community foundations will maximize this investment by working with donors in a coordinated manner to raise additional funds for land acquisition and land trust capacity-building efforts through the Alliance’s Pacific Northwest Advancing Conservation Excellence program.
The land capital grants support land trust acquisitions that advance climate resilience. The primary decision support tool underpinning the grant selections is a methodology developed by The Nature Conservancy: Conserving Nature’s Stage. It identifies natural places that, due to a local diversity of geophysical factors and a relative absence of barriers to the movement of species and habitats, are most likely to withstand the growing impacts of climate change and offer refuge to a diverse array of plants and animals. These sites often also provide people with important natural services, such as clean and abundant drinking water, and they buffer communities from climate change impacts.
Applicants will be asked to articulate how and to what extent the proposed acquisition advances climate resilience, both in reference to Conserving Nature’s Stage and other relevant data sources. The application also addresses the proposed acquisition’s broader conservation values, its feasibility, stewardship needs, organizational focus and community benefits.
Eligibility Criteria
- Proposals will be accepted from accredited land trusts — and those on a pathway to accreditation — for transactions that will permanently protect land and will close by the end of 2021.
- The Initiative aims to leverage Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s seed funding on a 5 to 1 basis, so projects able to meet or exceed that target are especially encouraged to apply.
- Please note that projects without a 5 to 1 leverage are eligible.
- Applicants may also include accompanying projects that both functionally relate to the proposed acquisition and have been protected within the Initiative timeframe.
For more information, visit https://www.landtrustalliance.org/what-we-do/our-regional-programs/west/pacific-northwest-resilient-landscapes-initiative