Landscape Scale Projects

Hat Creek

Shasta Land Trust is happy to announce that we are working on a large suite of projects in Shasta County with the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council and PG&E. We have an incredible opportunity to double both our number of completed conservation easements as well as our total acreage of protected lands, all while building the capacity of the land trust.

Shasta Land Trust is set to hold 15 conservation easements on nearly 33,000 acres. The majority of these projects are located within our two focus areas: the Cow Creek watershed and the Fall River Valley. These properties are largely connected to each other through large habitat corridors throughout our local watersheds; building landscape scale connections to significant lands. We're hiring a conservation project manager to help tackle these complex projects and are currently interviewing some highly qualified candidates.

The Stewardship Council was formed as part of a PG&E settlement agreement with the California Public Utilities Commission, which required permanent preservation of 140,000 acres of PG&E’s watershed lands. Some of the lands will be donated to conservation organizations while others will be retained by PG&E, but they will all be protected with perpetual conservation easements.

These projects in Shasta County have considerable conservation values such as outdoor recreation, sustainable forestry, agriculture, natural resource protection, open space preservation, and protection of historic and cultural resources, which tie in well to the mission of Shasta Land Trust. Since we don’t own land long-term, these properties, which have public access, will allow us to take more people out on the land to demonstrate what we do well: conserve land. Some of the properties also provide direct access to the soon-to-be-completed Great Shasta Rail Trail.

Through these projects, we also have the opportunity to collaborate and build relationships with numerous local conservation organizations, state agencies, and other partners. Stay tuned as we begin work on these exciting projects!