Depending on when you visit between our work days, you may encounter tall grass. We mow grassy trails about once a month in the growing season. finding your way, including using our live map with your smart phoneĪCRES trails are natural they aren’t paved or altered in any way other than the disturbance it takes to clear the path and keep it trimmed.Other than our simple rules, you don’t need to know much! In fact, much of the time, you’ll be able to follow the trail back to your car without any outside information or guidance. What do I need to know before walking through an ACRES preserve? The primary purpose of a nature preserve is preservation: supporting the health of the place itself and the life it holds the primary purpose of a park is usually recreation. Trails in a nature preserves offer experiences in the natural world where flora and fauna will continue to live and die, in place, for generations. ACRES preserves deepen visitors’ understanding, appreciation and connection to nature. What is a nature preserve? How is it different from a park?Ī nature preserve is a protected place where plants, animals and natural features can thrive, undisturbed. Our organizations work together to benefit our community’s appreciation and understanding of natural areas, to share knowledge, and to complement each other’s skill sets, priorities and missions. Contact ACRES to learn about your options.ĭoes ACRES compete or cooperate with Little River Wetland Project, The Nature Conservancy or other natural resource groups?ĪCRES Land Trust and each of these organizations are separate nonprofits with shared values, strong ties, and distinct missions. ACRES’ name will always remain on the deed. ACRES permanently protects natural places and working lands by guaranteeing to never develop or transfer them. Together, your investment pools with those of your friends and neighbors, ensuring these lands will remain undisturbed, for generations. No one can promise to protect thousands of acres of land forever. Protecting land takes a team – you can join in. ACRES has exciting and simple ways to contribute sweat equity (and not so sweaty equity, too!). Share your love! Take friends or family for a hike, share photos on Facebook or Instagram, wear ACRES gear on and off trail, give Preserve Guides or other ACRES merchandise as gifts.ACRES members are the lifeblood of the organization and they get some pretty cool benefits for their commitment. We’re so glad you asked! ACRES invites you to take action for what you value. Check out our Deep Map for more.ĪCRES receives generous support from our region’s community foundations, local private foundations and major donors. People protect land for a variety of reasons community conservation serves many and meets many goals. Your gifts and contributions of all sizes join together with those of others, protecting these special places in perpetuity. How is ACRES funded?Īs a nonprofit organization, ACRES is funded primarily through your private donations. It’s an uncommon approach – and why we exist.ĪCRES Land Trust is one of few land owners managing land this way in the long term. Trees on ACRES preserves will die in place and rot, continuing to serve the system. We don’t plant trees based on their market value we don’t try to grow them straight or cut them down before they are too large. ACRES does not manage a natural place for its profitability. What’s unique about our approach in the community, is that we aren’t managing the preserves for profit. This approach allows us to see success in letting native plants and/or diversity re-establish and gain a stronghold before we move on to manage another place.
When you observe how natural systems change with human disturbance, you can appreciate why ACRES attempts to limit our own management.ĪCRES aims to minimally disturb the land we manage we actively manage non-native invasive plants by 1) focusing on major threats and 2) focusing on specific places over a period of time. A conservative draw on dividends earned on our endowment will pay necessary assessments, drainage taxes and fees on the properties we currently own.ĪCRES protects land in three categories: Nature Preserves, Protected Lands, and Transferable Properties. Today, thanks to your generous support, dividends from the ACRES endowment now provide the financial sustainability to ensure that we can protect these properties – forever. Our founders wrote and helped introduce Indiana’s Nature Preserve Act established in 1967 to extend protection to preserves throughout the state. Once ACRES Land Trust protects a property, our name will always remain on the deed, guaranteeing its permanent protection.ĪCRES does everything possible to ensure permanent protection within the current legal framework of private land ownership law.
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