With Gratitude, a Final Note from Former ESLC President, Rob Etgen
WITH GRATITUDE,
At the end of this month I will conclude my nearly 32 year career with Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. Starting in a few weeks my attention will turn more to family and volunteer work plus some consulting and all taken together at a slightly slower pace. Rest assured I will be for the duration right here on the Eastern Shore and ESLC will always be in my heart.
My primary reason for this note is to express my thanks to the staff, Board members, supporters, conservation easement families, partners and everyone else here on the Eastern Shore for your friendship and collaboration for the last 32 years. I am forever grateful for the warm welcome and hospitality that I received when I moved here and which has continued to this day.
And what a great run our partnership has been. Of course the anchor of our work together has been protecting over 300 farms and forests on over 65,000 acres and securing roughly a third of our Eastern Shore Landscape in permanent conservation. We have also leveraged these preserves with the completion of a regional conservation inventory for targeting our efforts and which directly led to the formation of Md.’s award winning Rural Legacy Program.
We also worked together to stop the $1.4 billion MAPP transmission line across Harriet Tubman Country. We created our Center for Towns to focus efforts on our communities with parks and trails and successful projects like our Eastern Shore Conservation Center and Packing House. And most importantly, we worked together to shift this region from getting over 80% of our development on farms and shorelines in 1990, to now where more than 80% of our development goes into our towns where it adds to our vibrant communities.
I will leave ESLC with a deep sense of gratitude for all of the relationships that we have built and for all that we have accomplished together. I also have a burgeoning sense of hope for the spreading of our work across Delmarva and finishing the work of securing our farms and habitat for the future.
I am so honored to have been a part of the family decisions, the working team, and the collaborative community that has become ESLC.
To my coworkers, partners, Board members, and supporters….thank you and Godspeed!
Warmly…. Rob