Imagine a family at home on a quiet evening, unable to enjoy sitting on their porch due to noise, vibration and dust from a nearby industrial plant. Or children at school unable to hear their teacher due to the noise of aircraft flying overhead. These examples, though extreme, are happening across the nation as unplanned development creates incompatible land uses and their undesired results.
The Compatible Lands Foundation mission is to promote and create compatible land uses through land conservation activities and projects which improve the quality of life. As a nonprofit conservation organization, the Compatible Lands Foundation is expert at acquiring, monitoring and enforcing conservation easements, as well as working with additional land conservation programs and tools to the benefit of private property owners and public entities. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Compatible Lands Foundation Managers, staff and consultants work throughout the United States with both public and private partners.
Increasingly, incompatible land uses across the nation pose challenges to communities, private landowners, commercial enterprises, and public agencies. Military bases are put at risk of closure, watersheds are diminished or polluted, agricultural lands are converted to other uses, and the list continues. The Compatible Lands Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to address this trend by promoting land uses that both preserve natural resources and support essential public and private institutions and investments.
Throughout the nation, urban sprawl and unplanned urban growth are consuming lands that were once considered beyond the reach of development. Whether it's new residential communities, commercial development, industrial complexes, or intense agricultural production, the negative impacts of unplanned growth and urban sprawl can be seen virtually everywhere.
Often, this unplanned growth and urban sprawl poses threats to essential natural resources such as watersheds that provide people's drinking water, or habitat for endangered and other important species. Contaminants in storm water runoff enter streams and aquifers leading to huge public investments in new water treatment facilities. Essential natural habitat is lost, requiring large public and private expenditures in costly mitigation efforts.
Urban sprawl can also pose threats to communities and essential public and private services. Across the nation, military installations are at risk of closure or being forced to alter training operations to accommodate unplanned homes and subdivisions directly abutting their boundaries. Airports must alter flight paths and industrial parks have to modify their operations, and the list continues.
The costs of addressing these unplanned and incompatible land uses can be enormous, and unaddressed, they can have disastrous consequences on local economies and essential public services.
The Compatible Lands Foundation addresses these challenges through collaborative land conservation efforts. We work with public agencies, local governments, private landowners, and other partners to identify, enhance and protect important undeveloped or inappropriately developed lands and prohibit incompatible land uses through a variety of conservation tools. The Foundation provides training and consulting services on land conservation techniques, such as conservation easements, to protect open lands and preserve natural or cultural resources. Additionally, we assist partners in implementing land conservation efforts, from acquisition of conservation easements to identifying additional funding sources.
Often, these efforts are in the form of open space "buffers" around natural resources, such as a drinking water reservoir or wildlife refuge, or around a major public investment such as a military installation or airport. In addition to preventing incompatible land uses, open space resources such as productive agricultural lands and wildlife habitat are preserved.