The Partnership of Rangeland Trusts - 20 Years of Cooperation, Collaboration, and Conservation
Mountain & Prairie with Ed Roberson
Mountain & Prairie Media
4.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you're a longtime Mountain & Prairie listener, then you're already familiar with the Partnership of Rangeland Trusts, also known as PORT. But for any new listeners, PORT is an alliance of agriculture-focused conservation organizations dedicated to preserving working farms and ranches and conserving productive agricultural lands. PORT is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, and in those two decades (and as of this recording), PORT organizations have helped more than 2,000 families conserve almost 3.2 million acres of productive working lands across the West.
In this episode, I chat with three executive directors of PORT-affiliated organizations, two of which have been on the podcast before. You'll recognize Chad Ellis of the Texas Agricultural Land Trust (TALT), and Erik Glenn of the Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust. And new to the podcast is Michael Delbar, who leads the California Rangeland Trust. I've known all three of these guys for many years now, and I have long admired the ways that they lead their respective organizations. But perhaps even more impressive to me is how they have worked as a team with all nine PORT organizations to increase the scale, influence, and effectiveness of large-scale, working lands conservation.
I don't think I've ever recorded an episode this early in the morning– we squeezed it in between an early morning breakfast and PORT's board meeting. Just the day before, we had all been at TALT's Working Lands Innovation Summit on the Birdwell-Clark Ranch in Henrietta, Texas, which was a huge success. So this was a great time to reflect on the importance of working lands, and we covered a lot: The Working Lands Innovation Summit and the importance of spending time out on the land; the history and purpose of PORT, the growth of additive conservation projects; private lands conservation as an economic driver; hard work; innovation; the importance of advocating for conservation in Washington DC; future plans for PORT, and much more. As you'll hear, I start out chatting with Chad and Erik, and then Michael steps in for Erik about halfway through and shares his valuable perspective.
A huge thanks to TALT for inviting me to Texas and another huge thanks to all the PORT organizations and landowner partners who have had such a positive and significant impact on the landscapes of the West.
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- PORT
- Texas Agricultural Land Trust
- Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust
- California Rangeland Trust
- All PORT members
- Full episode notes and links: https://mountainandprairie.com/port/
- Ed's Book Recs
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TOPICS DISCUSSED:
- 4:00 - Intro / What brought us all to Texas
- 7:00 - Importance of being on the land for the conference
- 8:45 - Introduction to the Partnership of Rangelands Trust (PORT)
- 12:30 - How and why PORT was created
- 15:30 - Additive conservation and the future
- 18:45 - Examples of additive conservation projects
- 25:30 - Private lands conservation as an economic driver
- 29:15 - Intro to Michael Delbar
- 31:00 - How the perception of conservation easements has changed in California
- 32:00 - Once again, the importance of relationships
- 34:15 - Hard work and innovation
- 39:45 - Advocating in DC
- 42:00 - How PORT's scale translates into results
- 43:30 - Future plans for PORT
- 47:00 - Funding needs and parting words
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ABOUT MOUNTAIN & PRAIRIE:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody is it I've got two quick announcements before we start first I want to thank four brand new |
| 0:05.0 | Patreon supporters Gabe Fancher Steve Rines Andrew Finn and Lauren Page these four folks went to Mountain and Prairie.com |
| 0:14.0 | slash Patreon and signed up to support the podcast either on an annual or monthly |
| 0:18.6 | basis depending on what you choose and there are a bunch of different benefits that |
| 0:22.4 | come with that including a |
| 0:24.0 | Patreon exclusive podcast that I put out once a month. So you can go to Mount |
| 0:28.5 | Imperial.com slash Patreon to learn all about that. And second thing is, I'm going to be sending out my bi-monthly book recommendations pretty soon. |
| 0:38.0 | For almost nine years now, I've been sending out one email every other month |
| 0:42.0 | with five, six, six seven sometimes eight books |
| 0:44.7 | that I read over the past two months and want to recommend. There no sales |
| 0:48.8 | pitches, there's no sneaky stuff, there's nothing, it's just books that I've sent out I started |
| 0:54.0 | out sending it to about 30 of my friends back in 2015 and now the thing has grown and |
| 1:00.4 | grown and grown and I don't even know who's on it anymore but there are a lot of people and they seem to enjoy it so no strings attached just books that I read and like so if you want to learn more about that you go to Mountain Prairie Prairie com slash reading or follow the link in the episode notes. |
| 1:16.0 | Thanks so much. This is the Mountain and Prairie Podcast. I'm Ed Roberson. If you're a long time Mountain and Prairie listener, then you're already familiar with the partnership of Rangeland Trusts, also known as Port. |
| 1:38.0 | But for any new listeners, Port is an alliance of agriculture-focused conservation organizations dedicated to preserving working |
| 1:46.4 | farms and ranches and conserving productive agricultural lands. Port is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, and in those two decades, and as of this recording, |
| 1:58.4 | Port organizations have helped more than 2,000 families conserve almost 3.2 million acres of productive working lands across the west. |
| 2:07.4 | In this episode I chat with three executive directors of Port Affiliated Organizations, two of which have been on the podcast before. |
| 2:15.0 | You'll recognize Chad Ellis of the Texas Agricultural Land Trust, also known as Talt, |
| 2:21.0 | and Eric Glenn of the Colorado Cattleman's Agricultural Land Trust. |
| 2:25.0 | And new to the podcast is Michael Delbar, who leads the California Rangeland Trust. |
| 2:31.0 | I've known all three of these guys for many years now and I've long admired the ways |
... |
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