We’re halfway through the calendar year, but we’re already 70% through our yearly easement stewardship visits. Closing out the month of June, our staff have documented over 37,000 [or nearly 38,000 – editor’s choice] acres of protected land in accordance with our core responsibilities as a land trust and national standards for land trust accreditation. It’s a major time investment, averaging out to a minimum of 1 site visit for each working day of the year so far, covering more land than the entirety of Queenstown every week. With community support, we’ve been able to keep up this pace through investments in technology we’ve showcased before (drones, tailored apps and software, etc.), as well as in our staff, reorganizing our team to give them more time and capacity for stewardship.  

The mindset behind these continuous improvements is not a desire for increasingly faster easement stewardship, but a streamlining of the bureaucratic side of our work to give breathing room for our staff to deepen relationships with landowners and operators, explore opportunities for enhanced stewardship, and thoughtfully resolve easement concerns. ESLC still has just over 100 visits to go this year, which means we have 100 opportunities to continue serving the community through land stewardship. Here is just a sampling of what we’ve been able to accomplish in tandem with our stewardship visits so far: