Resources

Want to know more about land conservation?

Explore some of our additional resources.  With a library of terms, fact sheets and outside links you can learn more about ways to conserve your land and help answer your  questions.  Have a resource that you'd like to share with us?  If so, click here and let us know about it.    

Most Recently Added Resources:

Website: University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture - www.agriculture.utk.edu

Website: U.S. EPA Nonpoint Source Pollution Publications - www.epa.gov/owow/nps/pubs.html 

Southeast Watershed Forum
The Southeast Watershed Forum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting communities and organizations in better protecting their land and water resources through watershed-friendly growth. We are a regional center for education serving 14 states with training and technical assistance on watershed protection, quality growth strategies and conservation planning.  The Forum offers community-based training services, produces special reports on issues of regional significance and hosts regional conferences to enhance state-based programs and regional partnerships and collaboration for land and water conservation. Contact:   James Ford,  615-874-3540- JWF@southeastwaterforum.org  or Kristen Deitrick, 615-627-1310 - KD@southeastwaterforum.org

Land Trust for Tennessee
The Land Trust for Tennessee is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, which works exclusively with willing landowners to find ways to preserve forever the scenic and natural values of their land. The main tool for ensuring this preservation is called a conservation easement, and it is an alternative to just selling the land for development. A conservation easement allows a willing landowner to achieve three important goals:
• keep ownership of the land,
• preserve the important assets of the land through customized restrictions on future development, and
• obtain certain tax advantages
Other conservation options may also be available. Working with us, private landowners can protect the special qualities of their land, while meeting their important personal and financial needs.    Contact Audra Ladd,  (615) 244-LAND(5263) - aladd@landtrusttn.org 

Harpeth River Watershed Association
The Harpeth River Watershed Association (HRWA) in middle Tennessee is dedicated to preserving and restoring the ecological health of the Harpeth River and its Watershed. Their work leverages the scientific and technical training and experience of its staff and advisors with the efforts of a diverse corps of volunteers who are crucial to every aspect of their programs. Their board members, volunteer leadership, and hundreds of supporters are county commissioners, local city staff and officials, government agency staff, concerned citizens, farmers, business leaders, scientists, engineers, and community leaders who share a commitment to having an ecologically healthy river. Their goal is to restore and maintain a healthy and biologically important river in the heart of one of the fastest growing regions of the U.S. Contact Lindsay Gardner, 615-790-9767 - lindsaygardner@harpethriver.org   

USDA-NRCS
Since 1935, the Natural Resources Conservation Service (originally called the Soil Conservation Service) has helped America's private land owners and managers conserve their soil, water, and other natural resources. NRCS employees provide technical assistance based on sound science and suited to a customer's specific needs. They provide financial assistance for many conservation activities. Participation in their programs is voluntary

• Their Conservation Technical Assistance program provides voluntary conservation technical assistance to land-users, communities, units of state and local government, and other Federal agencies in planning and implementing conservation systems.

• They manage natural resource conservation programs that provide environmental, societal, financial, and technical benefits. Their science and technology activities provide technical expertise in such areas as animal husbandry and clean water, ecological sciences, engineering, resource economics, and social sciences. 

They provide expertise in soil science and leadership for soil surveys and for the National Resources Inventory, which assesses natural resource conditions and trends in the United States.  Contact Trent Cash, 615 -794-8488 x3  Trent.Cash@tn.usda.gov

Williamson County Soil & Water Conservation District
Conservation districts are local units of government established under state law to carry out natural resource management programs at the local level. Districts work with thousands of cooperating landowners and operators to help them manage and protect land and water resources on all private lands and many public lands in the United States. The districts were founded on the philosophy that conservation decisions should be made at the local level with technical and funding assistance from federal, state and local governments and the private sector.  Vina Winstead,  Williamson County District Office Manager : vina.winstead@tn.nacdnet.net

Williamson County Agricultural Extension Office
The Cooperative Extension System is a nationwide, non-credit educational network. Each state and U.S. Territory has an office at its land-grant university along with a network of local or regional offices.  These offices are staffed with one or more experts who provide useful, practical and research-based information to agricultural producers, small business owners, youth, consumers, and others in rural areas and communities of all sizes. The Cooperative Extension Service is part of the USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES). Contact: James D. Perry - 615-790-5721 -  jperry11@tennessee.edu