Summit Land Conservancy

Land conservation: in 2022 the Summit Land Conservancy continued our efforts to save the lands and waters that are important to our communities along the wasatch back area of northern Utah. The Conservancy placed 2 new conservation easements, preserving over 6,000 additional acres of Land. Our 2022 new easements included the iconic huntsville monastery farmland, which involved an 8.8 million federal grant and support from our partners at the ogden valley Land trust. We also accepted the donation of an easement on 5,000 acres on the warrior rizen ranch in morgan county. The Conservancy submitted funding requests to the federal government in 2022 for three projects across the wasatch back. The Conservancy continued work in 2022 on nine additional projects in wasatch, Summit, morgan, and weber counties and met with many potential new landowners. The Conservancy also offers professional support to other Land trusts in Utah to enable them to save Land in their service areas.

Outreach: the Summit Land Conservancy recognizes the importance of connecting our communities to the lands and waters we protect. If people do not spend time in nature, they will not develop a conservation ethic or desire to protect the green spaces that are vital to our survival. In 2022, the Conservancy offered a variety of community conservation programs for both adults and children to help foster relationships with the natural world. Kids were able to learn about local open space and stewardship through the Conservancy's outdoor explorers adventure camps which served 80 young conservationists. The Conservancy's kids outdoors program partnered with the park city school district after school program, and Conservancy staff visited four elementary schools to help restore unstructured nature play to 200 children. The Summit Land Conservancy expanded its outreach to over 200 adults who experienced park city's trails and open spaces in new ways through nature bathing hikes, hops hunters hikes, and moon shine adventures.

Stewardship and monitoring: this year the Conservancy monitored 51 properties in person, totaling over 9,000 acres. Staff visited every easement in person and utilized foot, bike, ski and vehicle travel to inspect properties and talk to landowners about their management of easement properties. Every year, the baseline and conservation easement are reviewed prior to monitoring for each property, and the sites of any reserved rights requests or violations are visited. The past year has been the most active reserved rights request year in the history of the organization. Several utility and infrastructure projects have taken place on or near the easement areas, and a significant amount of time was needed to ensure compliance with the terms of the easements. No violations occurred, but park city municipal requested the assistance of Summit Land Conservancy in the permitting and follow up process of projects proposed by rocky mountain power, as they had not fulfilled some of the remediation work proposed in past projects. The past winter was a record snowfall season throughout much of Utah. The Conservancy assisted landowners with emergency permitting to protect lands from flood damage in the spring runoff. Stewardship staff began constructing key infrastructure pieces for trails and continued agricultural use of the fee title properties, and completed management plans that will guide the use of the properties into the future.