THE LATEST
With Giving Tuesday around the corner and year-end giving campaigns underway, we are pledging donations to organizations that matter to us and inspire the work we do. We’ve created a list of folks in Montana and across the west that we think are doing meaningful work in the intersection between people and land for you to learn more!
Reducing Conflict with Grizzly Bears, Wolves and Elk, A Western Landowner’s Guide is now available. This informative landowner’s guide produced by Western Landowners Alliance features case studies from ranchers across the west that address the challenge of how to share and manage a wild, working landscape that sustains both people and wildlife.
At the Western Landowners Alliance Legacy on the Land event, Howard Weiss from the US Trust broke down succession planning and governance to their component parts.Succession planning has many elements. Expressed as a formula, succession planning = farm and ranch management + ownership transition + estate planning.
The Western Landowners Alliance Legacy on the Land event featured presentations regarding private operating foundations as a means of land succession planning. A private operating foundation is a legal entity structure in which the foundation spends 85 percent of the lesser of its adjusted net income or minimum investment return is used directly for its exempt activities.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture census data, the average age of farmers and ranchers exceeded 58 years of age for the first time in 2012. Succession planning is one of the aspects of aging land operators and properties nearing transition.
As a second edition of their webinar series focused on forestry issues, the Western Landowners Alliance (WLA) recently hosted a panel discussion on the uses of and challenges inherent in using prescribed fire to manage forests. While the speakers agreed that prescribed fire is a useful tool for proper management in most places, there were resounding concerns from all of the panelists regarding the use of prescribed fire including public perception and landowner education, liability, personnel, planning and coordination, and cost.
Across much of the American West, primarily the southwest, overstocked and mismanaged forests are leading to poor tree growth, increased fire danger and increases in threads to overall forest health from insects and disease. Additionally, the proper management of these same forests has the ability to create positive impacts in local economies by providing jobs and goods for regional communities. This intersection of the issues of private land stewardship and bolstering sustainable economies fits squarely within the mission of The Western Landowners' Alliance (WLA).
