We remove land permanently from the market, welcoming it into a community of care to ensure its long-term protection.

Land protection requires more than curating recreational preserves, or restricting specific activities with easements. In this era of unfolding climate disaster and growing inequity, we need to radically re-imagine our relationships with the land and with each other.

Protecting the land requires that we rebuild multi-generational, multi-species, cross-cultural relationships of justice, care, and reciprocity with the places and beings who sustain us. That’s what our work is about.

Land in Common offers pathways for people and communities to shift out of the toxic culture of private property and into a regenerative ethic and practice of commoning: holding the land together as a life-sustaining commons, ensuring that it is never again bought and sold, and connecting it with long-term stewards who are learning to experience it as a reciprocal relationship rather than a resource.

Pathways for Land Protection How do we welcome land into the commons?

  • Gifts of Land. Much of the land we hold has been gifted by people who love the land and believe in our vision for commons-based land care in the service of collective liberation. We welcome conversations with landowners who wish to ensure that their land is protected over the long-term and matched with committed land stewards. Learn more about this pathway here.

  • Bequests of Land. For landowners interested in long-term protection of land, but who are not yet ready or able to transfer the land into trust, we encourage writing Land in Common into your Will. A bequest of land is a powerful statement of your intention to ensure that the land is protected beyond your lifetime. Here is some sample language that can be added to a Will (PDF download). Please let us know if you are intending to do this, so that we can plan together.

  • Joining the Commons. We welcome conversations with landowners who believe deeply in Land in Common’s vision and wish to transfer their land into the commons while continuing to live on the land. This means releasing land from future possibilities of sale while retaining limited-equity ownership of the infrastructure, and becoming a Land Steward member of Land in Common. Land Stewards hold a 99-year, renewable Land Commitment (also called a “ground lease”) that secures their lifetime tenure on the land.

  • Purchase of Land. We generally don’t purchase land unless we are working in partnership with a group that is pursuing a specific vision with particular location or site needs, or unless we are partnering with people or organizations with capacity to significantly support necessary fundraising. Please get in touch if your vision matches one of these scenarios!

To learn more, you can read our Pathways to Land Protection: A Guide for Landowners. (PDF download) (view online)