The Nisqually Land Trust’s stewardship activities include monitoring our conservation interests, property management, and habitat maintenance and restoration. Our stewardship program supports both land and people. We enjoy building and maintaining lasting relationships and partnerships with families and organizations in the watershed and throughout the south Puget Sound region. The Land Trust owns and manages 17 protected areas. The Land Trust also stewards four conservation easements, which are voluntary and permanent legal agreements to protect specific conservation values.
Monitoring
Properties that are owned and managed by the Land Trust are monitored annually, or more, to ensure that there are no unexpected changes to the conservation values. Many are visited more frequently by volunteer Site Stewards and restoration project partners. Each conservation easement is monitored by Land Trust staff on an annual basis to ensure that the property complies with the terms of the easement. Following each monitoring visit, a report is generated that documents the conditions of each property on the date of that visit. These reports help guide management activities and are kept on file in perpetuity.
Habitat Maintenance and Restoration
With the permanent conservation of land comes the responsibility to care for it. Where the land has not been significantly altered, caring for the land may just mean ensuring that harmful human impacts are minimized. In some cases, caring for the land includes enhancing existing habitat conditions or restoring ecosystem processes.
The Nisqually Land Trust works closely with watershed partners to develop and implement process-based, habitat restoration projects. Many of these projects focus on restoring salmonid habitats, such as removing barriers to fish migration, replanting stream banks to improve riparian functions, installing engineered log jams to create instream habitat complexity and restoring connections between streams and their floodplains.