What they’re thinking: Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation hires staff for Eastern Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS — Carole Teator, 51, recently took a newly created position as Eastern Iowa program manager for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, which had not previously staffed this area. She had been with Trees Forever for 16 years before that.

Q: What will you do in your role?

A: I'll be a more local representative of the foundation in Eastern Iowa. There's 24 people on staff for INHF and all but three work in Des Moines. Two work up in Decorah and now I'll be the third one, working in Cedar Rapids. I'll be covering Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and over to Davenport. We also have a consultant working in the Loess Hills. In part, it's to be closer to landowners looking to protect their land, and partners who might be interested in doing some conservation work with the foundation and reaching out to our members and meeting with them.

Q: What does your organization do?

A: We work with Iowans to protect wildlife, wild lands and we do that for current Iowans and as well as for those that will come after us. Essentially, protecting land from development or other things that might harm wildlife and wild lands, and trail work. It's a land trust.

Q: What is a land trust?

A: That's an organization that navigates different scenarios that might help private property owners put protections on their land and all of the benefits that come with that. For example, if a landowner has reestablished a prairie or a prairie remnant or a woodland that has special natural resource characteristics, they'd work with a land trust to place protections on that property. (They can require) the property will be kept in either the current condition or restored to a healthy natural condition. The land trust helps that landowner navigate all of the ways that might be done. It could be donation of the property outright, or it could be donation of the property after the person passes away. Or, it could be a conservation easement, so the person retains ownership but some certain development rights are donated. They continue to own the property, but they can say, 'I don't want this property to ever by mined or logged or houses developed on it.' And, that's in perpetuity. That passes with the land so every successive landowner would be held to those restrictions.

Q: What land conservation efforts has the foundation been involved in locally?

A: Faulkes Heritage Woods, conservation easement for some of the land at Indian Creek Nature Center, Wickiup Hill.

There are several landowners (by Wickiup Hill) that are in the process of placing conservation easements on their land to keep it in a natural state. There's a nature center, kids activities and if you get out into the property there's a lot of hiking trails. The foundation worked with the county Conservation Board to protect much of that land at Wickiup Hill. Our goal is to reach out to other landowners in that neighborhood who might be interested in preserving their land through the various tools that are available.

It's great to have, let's say, 40 acres that are in woodland or prairie that are protected. If there are adjacent properties and you could start build on that, you could have a whole corridor that is bird habit. It just multiplies the benefits to wildlife and benefits.

Q: What's on top of your to-do list?

A: With all the work going on in the Cedar River basin, I anticipate working with the Middle Cedar Group to see if I can help at all with things happening in that watershed. Landowners have contacted foundation about how to protect their land. I'll reach out to them to start talking with them about what the different possibilities are for their land. And, finding out more about what different efforts are happening.

The Linn landowner forum this spring, the foundation was one of the partners working with the Monarch Research Project ... and we had 250 people come out, which was really cool. We are working on another one for the fall, Sept. 17. We are going to have another forum on establishing Monarch habitat and native plant habitat on people's land. The forum itself is going to be focused on landowners who are going to have 1 to 3 acres in Linn County. The point is to help them plant a prairie and manage a prairie. It is going to be very hands-on, very how-to.

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