PAR Seminars: EPA Sponsoring 9 Seminars Across Country 

(Note: Warning! Red Flags EVERYWHERE throughout this Trojan Horse of language deception and intent to Control. Please read with care.)

New Multistate PAR


The Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring seminars in New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Mississippi, Oregon, California and Washington featuring the new Multistate Property Analysis Record.

For additional information please e-mail Brenda Pace at bpace@cnlm.org or call 541-330-5533.

Center For Natural Lands Management

The Property Analysis Record: Paying for Perpetuity

Every parcel preserved for the benefit of biological resources requires management involving some level of expense. If not planned in advance, management in perpetuity can escalate into a tremendous capital requirement. The ideal, of course, is to establish a funding source that provides enough income to cover annual stewardship costs and includes a buffer to offset inflation.

How Much Money Is Enough?

The basic yardstick for deciding how much is needed is the average annual cost of management over the very long term. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to determine this, and managers around the country are struggling to develop formulas for calculating these costs. The costs vary widely with the nature of the land, the type of protection (owned or under easement), the purpose of conservation (endangered species, visitor services, education), and further varies year by year.

The Property Analysis Record

The Center for Natural Lands Management has developed a new tool, the Property Analysis Record (PAR). The PAR is a computerized database methodology that is extremely effective in helping land managers calculate the costs of land management for a specific project. The PAR helps analyze the characteristics and needs of the property from which management requirements are derived. It helps pinpoint management tasks and estimates their costs as well as the necessary administrative costs to provide the full cost of managing any property. The PAR generates a concise report which serves as a well-substantiated basis for long-term funding including endowments, special district fees, and other sources.

PAR Seminars

The Center presents the Property Analysis Record (PAR) methodology to land trusts, governmental agencies, environmental consultants, project proponents, and other interested parties throughout the U.S. through the seminar, "Planning Sustainable Conservation Projects." PAR software and a user's manual are provided to participants, and software is upgraded as new versions are introduced.

The PAR Seminar enables participants to:
 
Understand the need for long term stewardship;
 
Readily determine and justify the long-term activities and financial requirements of a conservation project;
 
Develop biologically and economically sustainable projects;
 
Identify a complete array of management responsibilities;
 
Provide an understanding of the financial components and financing mechanisms for stewardship;
 
Provide an accurate tool to standardize management and costing methodologies;
 
Increase communication and partnerships to produce cost-effective conservation projects.
 
Use a project PAR for ongoing biological and financial management.

PAR Concepts

As a part of the PAR seminar, participants are taught short-term and long-term planning concepts; management techniques; methods of estimating tasks and budgets; methods of establishing financing, including endowments; and utilizing fees and special districts to fund the stewardship necessary to preserve the habitat in perpetuity.

The Future

The PAR is being used by many organizations nationwide. Seminars have been held by the Land Trust Alliance, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), the Trust for Public Land in California and the First National Mitigation Bank Conference in Washington, D.C. Previous seminars have been jointly funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Dean Witter Foundation, ARCO Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Although the Center's primary focus has been on protecting California's species, habitats across the country will benefit from what we've been able to apply here in California. Each state faces their own challenges with conservation efforts. And because the PAR is a flexible tool, managers from other states will now learn the methodology and be able to apply that knowledge to their individual circumstances.
 
A certain goal is to create datasets for the PAR appropriate for conditions in every part of the country.

The PAR software has been modified over the last several months to become even more useful to ongoing conservation management. In these new versions, the long-term budgets of the PAR can be modified using the basic techniques of the PAR to provide short-term budgets, work-schedules by individual, and the fund budgets needed by investment managers.
 
Over the long-term, other management techniques such as GIS will be integrated into the PAR, making the system more universally adaptable.

Synopsis

There are many reasons for using the PAR. The initial reason is to anticipate and prepare for the costs of long-term management of the habitat.
 
The ultimate reason is to create better, more sustainable conservation projects.
 
The PAR embodies the recognition that to be sustainable ecologically, a conservation project must also be sustainable financially.
 
Without planning in perpetuity, many of our conservation projects may only be temporary.
 
The PAR helps overcome the difficulties of planning in perpetuity in a straightforward and user-friendly manner.

If you need additional information please write to: CNLM, 425 E. Alvarado St., Ste. H, Fallbrook, CA 92028 or e-mail bpace@cnlm.org.

To sign up for future seminars or order the PAR software and guidebook: http://www.cnlm.org/parform.html 

The cost of the seminar and software is $200 for nonprofits, $400 for governments, $600 for forprofit organizations, and $1,200 for a user license.