Johnson County Landowner Contributes Third Conservation Easement

Sheridan, WY—December 21, 2005—Lollie Plank purchased her first ranch property in Johnson County in 1990 with the commitment to leave a beautiful place better than she found it. That purchase was followed by contiguous land purchases in 1995 and 2004. Today, all three properties are protected by conservation easements Ms. Plank has donated to The Nature Conservancy.

The Plank properties are located on the east slope of the Bighorn Mountains, which is the home of the first conservation easement in Wyoming, donated to The Nature Conservancy by the estate of Oliver Malcolm Wallop in 1980. Since then, twenty three additional landowners have completed conservation easements totaling approximately 50,000 acres of conserved lands along the foothills of the Bighorns in Sheridan and Johnson Counties.

The east slope of the Bighorn Mountains has long been a conservation focus for the Wyoming Chapter of The Nature Conservancy due to the rich diversity of vegetation and wildlife species in the foothills. The conservation easements there encompass a rich diversity of habitats and wildlife: riparian corridors of willow, box elder and cottonwoods; ponderosa pine woodlands; and sage grasslands, all characteristic of the area.

The natural beauty of the foothills attracts residential development, too, which fragments these important wildlife habitats. Ms. Plank purchased the tract specifically to protect it from the possibility of being subdivided, since private lands in the immediate area are subject to homesite development. "Now,” she says, "I can rest easy that none of this land will be scarred by development."

“It is thanks to the foresight of people like Lollie that future generations will be able to enjoy this area of Wyoming as it now is,” said Sally Morton, Director of the Bighorns and NE Wyoming Program for The Nature Conservancy. In Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy and its partners have protected over 424,000 acres encompassing critical rangeland, breeding grounds, migration routes, lakes, rivers and streams.