It Takes a (Funding) Village for Land Conservation

Eleven percent of the greater Chicagoland region is made up of protected natural areas, like wetlands, forests, and prairies.  These areas are critical to our region’s quality of life and help to clean our water and air, provide wildlife habitat, absorb stormwater, and allow people to spend time in nature.     

As impressive as that 11% figure is in such a highly urbanized area like Chicago, we need more areas in our region to be preserved. But the work to do additional land protection and restoration takes enormous time, capacity, and money, let alone the constant stewardship and maintenance that protected areas need.  

Protecting and restoring more land is very resource intensive. There’s securing the land in the first place through either outright purchasing of land or other tools like conservation easements (a legal agreement that a landowner works out with a government or nonprofit partner to protect the land from development now and in the future). Then there is the ongoing restoration and maintenance that protected areas require. This preservation work strengthens the health and resilience of our region’s ecosystem, which is increasingly important in the face of climate change, declining biodiversity, and more extreme weather events like flooding. 

So yes, investing in our future through conservation is worth it but like all worthwhile endeavors, it takes a lot of work and a lot of money. 

As one of the only place-based funders in the Chicago region that provides consistent and sustained support for land conservation organizations and efforts, we are proud of the role we play. Yet private funding from philanthropic foundations like ours is not nearly sufficient given the scale of need for land conservation.  This work requires support from multiple levels of government including permanent funding solutions that can support conservation year after year.   

There are federal dollars available for land conservation and restoration, but these programs are complicated, competitive, and reliant on increasingly difficult-to-pass federal budgets and other bills.  And many federal dollars require matching funds for eligibility, so state and local governments are key players in the equation. So too are on-the-ground conservation partners that have the infrastructure and capacity to use these resources effectively.  And it isn’t just project-based federal dollars that are needed. More reliable and well-resourced state conservation agencies and dedicated state funding programs are critical for augmenting or exceeding federal efforts and advancing conservation priorities that are unique to a state or region.     

The Foundation looks forward to our continued role in assisting our partners with navigating federal and state funding needs and opportunities for land conservation. It really does take a funding village to ensure healthy and vibrant landscapes across the region for both people and nature to thrive. 

Photo: GDDF board and staff members visited the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. The land was the site of an ammunitions plant and arsenal and these concrete bunkers are remnants of that history. GDDF helped fund restoration work at Midewin, and in 2023, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation granted an additional $1.5 million in support of restoration as part of the federal America the Beautiful initiative.