Trust gets $360,000 to preserve scenic land

Thursday, February 14, 2002 
Erik Robinson for pdxguide.com

    PORTLAND, Oregon -- Columbia Land Trust will receive a $360,000 grant that will enable the conservation group to intensify its efforts to preserve open space.

    Meyer Memorial Trust notified the organization of the grant Friday, said Glenn Lamb, the land trust's executive director.

    The money, to be doled out over the next three years, will pay almost a third of the cost associated with adding two more employees. One will apply for grants and the other will meet with private landowners interested in granting conservation easements or selling their properties. The land trust itself will have to raise money to pay the employees' full salaries.

    "We have to increase our fund-raising to support the positions," Lamb said.

    The new hires will be the seventh and eighth employees for the land trust, which began 11 years ago and has gained momentum in recent years.

    Lamb became its first full-time employee three years ago. The organization's annual budget now amounts to $600,000, Lamb said, and it has become a much more high-profile player in conservation efforts over the past few years.

    The land trust's success in conserving more than 2,500 acres of land in the Columbia River Gorge and Southwest Washington reflects a national trend.

    According to the Land Trust Alliance, local and regional land trusts have conserved about 6.4 million acres of open space as of the end of 2000 an area about twice the size of Connecticut and more than triple the 1.9 million acres protected as of 1990.

    Lamb said $100,000 of the Meyer grant will create a revolving transaction fund, which will provide the organization with up-front money to appraise and survey properties.

    The Meyer Memorial Trust was established by the late Portland grocer Fred Meyer. With assets of $495 million, it is one of the largest nonprofit foundations in the Northwest and in the United States.