Conservation

A land trust's mission is to conserve property and natural resources. Our responsibility as a Land Trust obligates us, as stewards of the conservation values of a property, to maintain a watch over these lands forever.

Landowners work with a Land Trust when they wish to permanently protect the productive, ecological, scenic, historic, or recreational qualities of land they own from unwanted or consumptive uses. The Blue Mountain Land Trust provides services to landowners throughout Southeast Washington and Northeast Oregon. We help choose a conservation strategy that meets landowners' protection desires and financial needs.

A landowner may choose to donate or sell parcels of land to a Land Trust in order to place the land entirely in the Trust's permanent care. However, a landowner may decide to transfer a conservation easement to the Land Trust instead, which places protective restrictions on future uses of his or her land. The conservation easement also assigns responsibility to the Land Trust to enforce those protections forever, even when the ownership of the land changes. Often, a property owner is entitled to reductions in both state and federal taxes by transferring development rights or ownership to the Trust.

Our History

The initial meeting to organize a land trust in the Walla Walla area was held on July 6, 1999. Invitations were sent to the three local colleges, the county extension office, the Native Plant Society, Audubon, Walla Walla 2020, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department, area farmers, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Seattle office of the Land Trust Alliance, the inland Northwest Land Trust in Spokane, the Palouse Land trust in Moscow and other conservation groups and interested individuals.

At the initial meeting, articles of incorporation were approved to establish the Blue Mountain Land Trust (BMLT) as a Washington non-profit corporation and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization with broad powers to preserve land for recreation, education, habitat, open space, farmland, forest land and historical purposes throughout the Blue Mountain region of southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon.

Since incorporation, our activities have focused on several categories:

* Capacity-building
* Education
* Easement acquisition and stewardship
* and Strategic planning.