Intermountain West pilot program

Throughout the Intermountain West, the health and quality of life of communities of all sizes depend on their surrounding landscapes. In Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and northern New Mexico, cities and towns rely on these lands to provide clean water, along with economic support from recreation, farming, ranching, and sustainable forestry.

With lead support from the LOR Foundation, The Trust for Public Land has launched a pilot program to explore and demonstrate how rural communities can conserve natural resources to support local health and livability.

Our goal is to show how long-term collaboration between local residents, businesses, government, and nonprofits can support and sustain healthy communities by protecting natural resources like water. From this beginning, we plan to extend the idea to establish the use of land conservation as a core method of improving the quality of life across the Intermountain West.

During the pilot program, six communities will work directly with The Trust for Public Land to create and execute a conservation strategy that identifies locations where resource protection would deliver measurable benefits for residents and economies. Other communities will benefit as we share what we are learning, using the results to inform their own conservation efforts. The long-term goal is to protect water, expand outdoor recreation, and enhance the economic self-reliance of communities throughout the region.

A principal objective for the LOR Foundation is to improve the quality of life in rural communities through locally driven solutions—and this approach is also fundamental to The Trust for Public Land’s mission of protecting land for people to ensure healthy, livable communities for generations to come.

For more information contact us.