LandCAN

Why We Do It

Why We Do It

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Our Mission

To promote the protection of endangered species, farms, forests, ranches, wetlands, and other open spaces by empowering landowners to make smart, sustainable decisions about their land.

Our Values

  • Passion for Conservation
    Conservation is what we are about. We provide the entire spectrum of conservation assistance programs to landowners nationwide—federal, state, non-profit, and for-profit.

  • Empowering People
    We help private landowners preserve land that is at the heart of their family history. Land is both real and symbolic of the continuity of family.

  • Information You Trust
    We are committed to providing quality resources, tools, and other information that landowners can trust to accomplish their conservation goals and outcomes.

  • Driven to Innovate
    From its beginning, LandCAN was the first to harness the power of the internet to connect people for the conservation of land. We encourage fresh ideas and new ways of doing things by building collaboration opportunities that translate into tangible and measurable on-the-grounds actions.

  • Purpose-Led Performance
    Our national conservation efforts are driven by a commitment to do what’s right. We promote and facilitate the revival of conservation as a core American value, specifically through aiding the sustainable use of natural resources on private lands – farming, ranching, and forestry – that benefit the environment and rural economies.

The key to conservation stewardship in the 21st century -
Private landowners

The contiguous 48 states, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands cover over 1.94 billion acres of land and water; about 71 percent of this area is privately owned rural land – nearly 1.4 billion acres.

These rural lands are predominantly forest land (413 million acres), rangeland (406 million acres), and cropland (363 million acres).

Private lands represent the forefront of the conservation marketplace in the 21st century. Privately owned lands hold the key to protecting biodiversity, the uptake of sustainable agriculture and forestry, and the protection of open spaces – especially along the suburban fringe of our expanding metropolitan areas.

A confluence of factors has increased the need for the kind of multi-faceted conservation approach required to improve and accelerate conservation on private lands. They include:

  • declining federal and state budgets
  • the increasing fragmentation of private ownership in rural areas
  • the increasing importance of private lands in providing raw materials for new markets, such as biofuels, and ecosystem services that support urban centers
  • the graying tsunami of rural America ( average age of a farmers is 60+, forest owners 70+)
  • the loss of ecologically and economically valuable private working lands is accelerating

Private lands

Private landowners are the stewards of the land and are some of the most practical and effective land managers in the U.S. There are about 13 million landowners in the United States. They husband 71% of the lower 48 states, 82% of the nation’s wetlands, and 80% of the country’s endangered species habitats. Agriculture and agriculture related industries accounts for approximately 5% of the gross domestic product.
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Stewardship

Working farms, ranches and non-industrial forest lands constitute the nation’s largest repositories of biodiversity. The world’s most productive breadbasket, and abundant/regenerating forests which provide bountiful supplies of wood, fiber, fuel, recreation and reservoirs for ecosystem services and carbon sequestration are all cared for by private landowners.

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Energy Efficiency

Land Conservation Assistance Network has developed a suite of web tools that help agricultural producers and associated industries address and effectively manage the factors that impact climate change.
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