TPL provides professional technical services to state and local government executives, boards, legislatures, and public agencies that need to research and evaluate conservation finance options. TPL’s pragmatic, hands-on approach focuses on researching and developing legislative and ballot measures that reflect public priorities. Our technical assistance services include:

·         Feasibility research – TPL explores fiscal capacity and finance options, evaluates legal issues and election history, and defines best practices.

·         Public Opinion surveys – TPL manages surveys by expert polling firms to gauge voter support for alternative funding methods and amounts.

·         Measure design – For ballot measures, TPL recommends the optimal funding method, amount of funding, election timing, and ballot language. For legislative measures, TPL also advises on program design and recommends funding methods and amounts.

·         Program design and evaluation – TPL provides models and recommendations for operating conservation programs.

·         Campaign services – TPL helps community leaders and citizen groups craft campaigns to win approval of ballot and legislative measures for parks and land conservation. TPL’s lobbying and campaign affiliate organization, The Conservation Campaign (TCC) raises campaign funds, sponsors ballot measure committees, and supports adoption of legislative measures. TCC is the only national organization devoted solely to creating, renewing, and protecting funding for land conservation. Campaign services offered by TPL and TCC include: selection and management of professional pollsters, design and analysis of campaign polls; campaign planning, management, and fundraising; selection and oversight of campaign consultants; writing and production of direct mail, radio, and television advertisement; public education and get-out-the-vote programs; and managing compliance with campaign finance and lobbying laws.

This month, the Conservation Leaders Network is working with The Wilderness Society to inform counties in six Southwestern states about solar development on public lands, and the public comment period that ends January 27.

 The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), through a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), is currently developing utility-scale solar energy policies and land allocations on public lands in six southwestern states.  This federal effort encompasses more than 90 million acres of BLM-managed lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. 

 Domestic energy resources like solar can reduce our reliance on overseas energy, improve the quality of our air and water, and put people in counties across the West to work today.  Large-scale solar projects are needed to help meet these goals, and much of the region’s solar energy potential is found on public lands.  As with any energy development, these projects will have impacts on local communities, wildlife, and traditional uses of these lands.

 Thanks to comments received on a draft plan this spring, the BLM has put forward a balanced proposal that focuses on pre-screened, low-conflict zones for large-scale solar energy development.  This proposal—effectively a roadmap for solar development on public lands—puts forth specific areas where development should (and should not) occur based on solar potential and environmental and other impacts. The BLM’s plan provides an opportunity for county governments to help shape solar development areas, and the accompanying economic development in rural areas across the West. To review the BLM’s plan, go to:  http://solareis.anl.gov/documents/supp/index.cfm.

 The BLM’s plan contemplates a unique and flexible approach for siting solar power plants which includes three key components: 1) guiding development to low-conflict lands through solar energy zones, which have been prescreened to minimize  environmental and other impacts and are protected from competing uses; 2) a clear process to receive nominations, including by counties, to propose new zones; and 3) a variance process to allow development of well-sited projects outside of pre-screened zones. This plan would provide counties with much greater say as to where solar projects and adjacent transmission development is to occur, while also protecting the outstanding landscapes that so many Western families rely on for hunting, fishing, recreation and tourism.

 You can submit comments to:

 Bureau of Land Management

Attn.:  Shannon Stewart

Solar Energy Draft PEIS

Argonne National Laboratory

9700 S. Cass Avenue—EVS/240

Argonne, IL  60439

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects to award between $1.8 to $3.8 million in funding for projects across the country to help restore urban waters by improving water quality and supporting community revitalization. The funding is part of EPA’s Urban Waters program, which supports communities in their efforts to access, improve, and benefit from their urban waters and the surrounding land.  Healthy and accessible urban waters can help grow local businesses and enhance educational, recreational and employment opportunities in nearby communities.

The goal of the Urban Waters Small Grants program is to fund research, studies, training, and demonstration projects that will advance the restoration of urban waters by improving water quality through activities that also support community revitalization and other local priorities such as public health, social and economic opportunities, general livability and environmental justice for residents. Examples of projects eligible for funding include:

·       Education and training for water quality improvement or green infrastructure jobs

·       Public education about ways to reduce water pollution

·       Local water quality monitoring programs

·       Engaging diverse stakeholders to develop local watershed plans

·       Innovative projects that promote local water quality and community revitalization goals

Information about Urban Waters Small Grants including the Request for Proposal (RFP) and registration links for the webinars is available at http://www.epa.gov/urbanwaters/funding.  EPA expects to award the grants in Summer 2012.

 The purpose of the Local Sustainability Matching Fund is twofold: to catalyze partnerships between local government sustainability directors and local, place-based foundations, including community foundations, and to advance important community-based sustainability initiatives. The Fund will provide partnership investments between $25,000 and $75,000, with a 1:1 match required by one or more local foundations. The Network anticipates that the Fund will support up to ten partnership projects in the first year in two rounds in the spring and fall of 2012.

The U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry, Technology Marketing Unit, located at the Forest Products Laboratory, requests proposals for wood energy projects that require engineering services. These projects will use woody biomass, such as material removed from forest restoration activities, wildfire hazardous fuel treatments, insect and disease mitigation, forest management due to catastrophic weather events, and/or thinning overstocked stands. The woody biomass shall be used in a bioenergy facility that uses commercially proven technologies to produce thermal, electrical or liquid/gaseous bioenergy. The funds from the Hazardous Fuels Woody Biomass Utilization (WBU) Grant program must be used to further the planning of such facilities by funding the engineering services necessary for final design and cost analysis.

For more information go to:

 Your gift this month will help ensure that the Conservation Leaders Network will advocate for the protection of gray whales along the west coast. 

 Oregon is establishing wave energy facilities within its Territorial Sea (from the coast out 3 nautical miles).  So far, we’ve succeeded in getting existing gray whale migration path data to be considered in the siting of these facilities.  Unfortunately, we have seen no evidence yet that the Territorial Sea Plan Working Group is interested in avoiding important areas for gray whales.  Over the next couple of months, a series of public meetings will be held, which will be our last chance to get the Working Group on board.

 You can help by making a contribution to the Conservation Leaders Network to pay for the travel and time we are investing in this effort.  Click on:

You can help by speaking out at these public meetings. Yes, renewable energy is an admirable goal, but not at the expense of majestic ancient creatures like the gray whale. We should site these facilities in areas that won’t harm the whale.

 The schedule for these meetings will be posted soon at http://oregonocean.info/oceanenergy.