Logo for The Trust for Public Land (TPL)
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Formation | 1972 |
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Founder | Huey Johnson |
Founded at | San Francisco, California, US |
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Website | www |
The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a US nonprofit organization that facilitates and funds the creation of parks and protected lands. The organization originally differentiated itself from other environmental organizations and land trusts with a particular emphasis on human community benefits as opposed to wildlife, ecosystem, or agricultural landscape preservation. However, the scope of the organization's activities now commonly encompasses the latter values as well. The organization has been involved with more than 5,300 park and conservation projects in 47 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands since 1972. The trust’s projects bring land into public or protected ownership for parks, trails, natural areas, watersheds, river and waterfront access, and productive farms and forests. The trust also oversees the planning and construction of city parks and urban placemaking projects and raises local, state, and national funds for conservation. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the trust maintains more than 30 offices and 300 staff nationwide.
The trust’s projects and programs fall into three broad initiative areas:
Mission goals are accomplished through the following services to government agencies, conservationists, and communities:
The Trust for Public Land was founded in San Francisco in 1972 by Huey Johnson, former western regional director of The Nature Conservancy, and other San Francisco Bay Area and national lawyers and conservationists. Johnson’s goal was to create an organization that would use emerging real estate, legal, and financial techniques to conserve land for human use and public benefit. An additional founding goal was to extend the conservation and environmental movements to cities, where an increasing segment of the population lived.
Early programs of the 1970s and ‘80s included:
The Nature Conservancy – Founder Huey Johnson saw the organization as both a “logical outgrowth of” and “complementary to” The Nature Conservancy. Both organizations conserve land and partner frequently with one another on projects and programs. Unlike The Nature Conservancy, however, The Trust for Public Land does not own nature refuges or conservation land, instead transferring it to public agencies or other nonprofits for protection.