At the Rally 2025 Land & Water Summit, I provided visual note-taking for the pre-Rally gathering of land conservation practitioners dedicated to protecting land, water, and ecosystems in their communities.
Rally 2025 was the exciting annual gathering of inspired and passionate land conservation practitioners from around the world who are dedicated to conserving cherished places in our communities, and I was there to capture the “pre-Rally” Land & Water Summit held the day before, with about 75 environmental experts from the midwest in attendance with visual note-taking.
This was a phenomenal experience for me. Living in the Midwest now for 13 years, I appreciated the Midwest focus of the conference and its location in Cleveland right on Lake Erie. And I’m almost always interested in the topics and conversations at the many meetings and conferences I capture, but conserving land and restoring ecosystems is the issue nearest and dearest to my heart (fun fact: I studied environmental education in college).
While public lands are a target right now for selling/using/developing/ with the current administration – causing me a lot of anxiety and dread – I learned a lot about the difference with land trusts: they’re FOREVER. Working with land owners through easements or outright donations, land trusts save special natural areas in communities all over the country.
And finally, I was moved by a story one land trust board member told me while I was drawing an engagement board during a reception: that it’s all about relationships and developing trust with land owners who want to preserve their legacy. Sometimes it takes YEARS for these arrangements to work out.
