|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
 More CLCC PagesCLCC Homepage |
Dr. Charles Leach, Farmington Land Trust Vice President and CT Land Conservation Council Steering Committee member, is the 2007 winner of the Land Trust Alliance’s National Volunteer of the Year Award. This prestigious award was presented at Rally on October 4, 2007 in Denver, Colorado.
The Land Trust Alliance describes the criteria for this award as:
- Given to a volunteer who makes a significant contribution to the advancement of land conservation (board, advisor, Alliance faculty, writer for Exchange)
- Provides leadership in the conservation community
- Service inspires the work of others
- Demonstrates humility in all activities to promote conservation
- Mentors land trust practitioners in their work
The following is an excerpt from the Land Trust Alliance’s website describing the award and recipient:
About Charlie Leach
Charlie inherited his environmentalist gene - an autosomal dominant which has cropped up in past generations of his kinship. The phenotype was influenced by family tradition and by a rural childhood in Vermont.
Mr. Leach said: “I am honored to be the recipient of the Volunteer of the Year Award, but want to make very clear that whatever contributions I was able to make were the result of teamwork with a remarkably dedicated and skilled Farmington Land Trust board. In brief, we suffered a savage encroachment, and found that Connecticut’s 1726 law gave us no chance of redress. Town and State agencies were no help, and Connecticut’s Attorney General would not prosecute.”
About The Process
Mr. Leach explained that “first, our board thoroughly documented the damage to our own property. I then surveyed approximately 100 other Connecticut land trusts to generate an encroachment database. This became an important element of CT’s Council on Environmental Quality’s report to the legislature, and Farmington became the “poster child” in a movement to improve encroachment legislation. I and other board members then addressed the CEQ, helped our state representatives design and introduce legislation, testified at environment committee hearings, lobbied legislators and collaborated with other environmental groups in the state. The result was model legislation which prescribes severe penalties for tree-cutting on protected lands and allows land trusts to recover legal fees from encroachers.”
Poetic Justice
Mr. Leach added that: “probably the first test of the new law will involve a tree-cutting on land under Land Trust easement right here in Farmington – a gross, deliberate and very damaging act. Again, however, the Land Trust has had to prod the Town to take action. Because of our recent lobbying experience, our mindset has changed. Though a small Land Trust, we have become a vigilant and proactive force in our community.”
Congratulations, Charlie!
Nature picture credits - top to bottom: © Francesca Dalleo/Land Trust Alliance (Alliance Board Chairman Peter Hausmann with Charlie Leach).
Join The Nature Conservancy on