Private lands support more than 2/3 of the species listed under the Endangered Species Act, with 10% of listed species occurring only on private lands. Join Mary Pfafko, our Senior Policy Analyst for Private Lands, at a gathering in Louisiana of land trust conservation professionals from across the country. Learn more at https://defenders.org/private-lands-conservation
Video Transcript:
Mary:
Hi, My name is Mary Pfafko, I’m senior policy analyst for private lands based in Defenders’ D.C. office, but today I’m in… New Orleans.
This week I’m attending the Land Trust Alliance Annual Conference Rally, which is a gathering of land conservation professionals from across the country.
Land trusts are non-profit organizations that acquire or steward land or conservation easements for the purpose of conservation.
Today I’m on a field trip to the Woodlands Conservancy, which is a land trust that owns 840 acres of forested wetlands.
We’re just about 8 miles from downtown New Orleans. We’re on a 4 mile hike along a forest restoration site along bottomland hardwood coastal forest that’s home to wildlife including tricolored bat, which has been proposed for federal listing as endangered.
Craig Hood, PH.D.:
With regards to bats, we’ve documented in the last 3 years 10 species.
You know, intact natural habitats whether they’re terrestrial ones like terra firma, or whether they’re water habitats, even if they’re not 100% natural like you can’t say this is the way it was 200 years ago or even 100 years ago, if it has ecosystem functions and it’s functional then it can still serve all of these species.
Mary:
Private lands support more than 70% of the species listed on the Endangered Species Act list.
With more than 2/3 of the land in the continental US under private ownership we couldn’t conserve wildlife without these stewards of the land.
