Frontera Land Alliance Announces New Initiative

[Janae' Reneaud Field, the Executive Director of Frontera Land Alliance introduced a new conservation initiative yesterday at the Open Space Advisory Board. The initiative leverages funds and partnerships. Below is the initiative. Do become familiar with Frontera. Support it with your tax-free donations.]

Introduction of Frontera Land Alliance and why it started this initiative

The Frontera Land Alliance (Frontera), a local 501(c) (3) non-profit focuses on the conservation of water, land and open space. We work in Hudspth, Culberson El Paso, and may work in southern NM counties.

We focus our efforts on:  

1) Enhance the protection of the Franklin Mountains with additional buffer lands; 
2) Protect water resources—rivers, streams and wetlands, watershed, aquifers; 
3) Protect species diversity, rare species habitat and other significant habitat, and enhance the protection of these ecosystems; 
4) protect working farms and ranches; 
5) Preserve scenic views, critical open space and historic character of the built and unbuilt environment;  
6) Link protected lands and promote existing greenways, trails and provide opportunity for new trail development, or other recreational opportunities and; 

One way to achieve the above goals is with an initiative Frontera is investigating, which is a collaborative project that will leverage funds and partnerships.  

Examples of the types of grants available
1) Types of support that possibly could be provided by foundations and government agencies include the purchase of conservation easements or acquire fee simple lands. 
a. Lands of conservation interest could include  natural arroyos, recreational lands, connector trails for wildlife and people 
b. Conservation easements allow funds to go further & landowner stays on tax roll and they are the managers of their lands. 
2) Address flooding in low income neighborhoods by conserving lands around them to allow a place for the water to flow naturally away from low income neighborhoods
3) Conservation of large animals and their habitat such as the mountain lion
4) Address the mental and physical health of people by getting people outside and allowing them the places to become active or just be in nature

Frontera has relationships with several foundations that have interest in conservation, but we need matching funds before we can approach them for additional grant funds. 

Example of how this process might work:

To be able to approach the foundations we need to know who is participating, what the parties and individuals can bring to the table (land or matching funds). Need to know details such as the number of acers to be conserved and what method (fee simple, conservation, donations of land or conservation easements), and the amount of matching funds we have and what amount of grant funds we are asking from them, and finally a map of the lands. We will summarize this information and present it to the identified foundations asking for permission to submit a full proposal. 

Click on image to enlarge.

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