February 27, 2025
This year started with momentum. With so little of southern Illinois conserved, in fact less than 6%, community support has been a major force in helping us gear up and leverage funding to conserve critical lands, while there is time.
The community has been behind the extraordinary push to save our state’s last prairies and ramp up habitat restoration and care.
Thanks to community support, we have been also working with several families to conserve their historic farms and woodlands.
In fact, as we started out this year, it looked like we would be able to accelerate the pace of local land conservation and the planting and caring for habitat, as never before.
But, now, I’m sorry to report that we and local conservation are facing major challenges.
The current freeze and imminent loss of federal conservation funds (that we had been awarded and were already working on) are significantly impacting our efforts. We’re facing a possible $300,000 shortfall as a result.
We’ve already had to make some difficult decisions in the interim. We had to let one staff person go and canceled most stewardship days for February and March.
We’re working diligently to keep programs going. However, if we can’t keep our team together, it means we won’t be able to preserve more prairies, forests, or marshes.
I have to say that the timing couldn’t be much worse.
We are receiving requests from local families for conservation assistance. Often their only other choice is to sell their land for development. Some want to donate their land to us to create new nature preserves.
The good news is that I know people care about the special places of southern Illinois – the family farms, the prairies, the woods and marshes, and the parks, trails and communities.
That’s why I’m asking for the community’s help given the unprecedented nature of this sudden shortfall.
If you or someone you know is interested in stepping in to save these projects, there are many cash-free, and tax-savvy, giving options.
Please share that gifts from donor-advised funds, gifts of stock, and minimum required distributions from an IRA are all excellent ways to make a gift and potentially reduce your income taxes.
If we are able to close the funding shortfall due to the sudden and unexpected pull back of previously awarded conservation funding, we can continue to save the critical lands in southern Illinois.
Any gift, of any amount, including contributions by mail or online will be helpful.
I’m going to remain hopeful, as this is no better way to make a difference than conserving the lands we all treasure before they are lost to haphazard development and the impacts of extreme weather.
Nature needs us as never before. We are determined to figure this out.
Thank you for standing up for the lands and waters we all love.
Mary Vandevord
President & CEO, HeartLands Conservancy
ma************@*******************cy.org
(618) 566-4451 ex 20
