Great Land Trust introduces conservation campaign

The Mat-Su Valley is a special place.

For those who have grown up in Alaska, living here means enjoying a life connected to nature. People like me — the transplants who came for a visit and never left — also are captivated by the majesty of this place. For all of us, living surrounded by epic mountains, being able to hike to glaciers, having moose nibble on our gardens (as frustrating as it is), and filling our freezers with salmon every summer provides a unique lifestyle that is unlike anywhere else in the world. It’s this quality of life that has, over the past 20 years, enticed more than 50,000 people to move here and call the region home.

Salmon are a big part of the foundation of the outdoor lifestyle Mat-Su residents enjoy. Although the Valley is perhaps not as well-known for salmon fishing as Bristol Bay or the Copper River, for example, salmon support our local economy, too, by providing food security for our families and enriching the natural environment by feeding other animals. Salmon get us outside in hopes of catching the elusive “king,” and they help keep us in tune with the seasonal changes.

In the Mat-Su, it is hard to find a place without salmon nearby. We see them in the summer as they enter our rivers to find their birthplace to spawn, we see them as fry in slow-moving creeks, lake shores, and wetlands during the late fall and spring, and we even see them under the ice when skating. Salmon are literally living around us all year long.

Throughout the rest of the country, the number of salmon has declined, mostly due to habitat loss. In areas where salmon no longer flourish, taxpayers are spending millions of dollars a year trying to restore salmon habitat with the hope that they will return.

Fortunately, in the Mat-Su, we still have our salmon. We simply need to protect the habitat we have and the salmon will continue to return in abundance.

As the Mat-Su Program Director for Great Land Trust, I am in a unique position. Most of my workday is spent listening to local residents tell stories about why they love living in the Mat-Su. I never tire of hearing their stories of the past, hopes and dreams for the future, and interesting outdoor discoveries they continue to have. In return, I am able to offer them opportunities to protect the lands they love — forever. As a local land trust, Great Land Trust’s specialty is developing voluntary agreements with landowners that permanently limit future development and subdivision on lands that have high conservation values, like salmon habitat.

Over the past five years, I have talked with hundreds of private landowners about conservation options for their family lands. During this process I have learned that many landowners understand the value of the habitat on their property and are actively caring for the habitat. They know — almost to the day — when the Sandhill cranes will come back, when it’s time to plant their gardens, and when the salmon will return to their spawning grounds.

Because the Mat-Su is still so undeveloped, residents are intimately connected to what is happening on their land. They understand their lands are providing sanctuaries for fish and wildlife. And it’s because of this close connection that residents are making good choices and are careful to not impact sensitive habitats.

As a small nonprofit and non-partisan land trust, we at Great Land Trust recognize that we don’t have the resources to conserve all the important habitats in our service area. We need private landowners to be good stewards to ensure that this generation leaves the next generation a legacy of salmon. As our community grows and develops, taking care of healthy habitat that we have throughout the region will be key to keeping our salmon populations strong and abundant.

In the fall of 2013, Great Land Trust mailed a packet of information to over a thousand private landowners in the Mat-Su. In the packet we provided information about how private landowners could care for their backyard habitat, support healthy salmon populations, and protect water quality. We offered information about shoreline restoration, culvert replacement, invasive species, stormwater runoff, and many agency contacts for organizations that offer financial and technical support to private landowners interested in enhancing and restoring their backyard habitat. We also included information about land conservation options GLT is available to coordinate.

The response to the packet has been eye-opening. I have been surprised by the number of landowners who reached out to us once they received the packet to tell us their stories about what they are already doing to care for habitat on their lands.

In 2014, we launched our King Maker campaign as a way to recognize and celebrate the actions many private landowners were taking to support habitat on their family lands. We titled the campaign King Makers because salmon are the “King of Fish,” and we like to say, “little actions make big fish.”

We are excited to share weekly King Maker stories with the community to celebrate Mat-Su residents’ actions benefiting salmon habitat. We hope these stories will inspire others to take action.

For more information about conservation options for family lands, or to share a King Maker story, contact Kim Sollien at 746-6406 or ksollien@greatlandtrust.org.