BRIEFLYEdited by Rodd Whelpley LAND TRUSTS A legacy of open spacesThe state's second-largest Ohio Buckeye tree - for many years it held the title as the largest - sits in a wooded area along Little Rock Creek in Kendall County. Now it's forever protected from suburban sprawl, thanks to Arlene Jay Robb of Urbana. Robb recently inherited the tree, along with the 120-acre Illinois Centennial Farm that surrounds it. (Farms merit official Centennial status if they have been in the same family for a century or more.) Robb placed 45 never-plowed acres in a land trust with the Conservation Foundation, a local, nonprofit organization that has focused for the past 27 years on land conservation and watershed protection in DuPage, Kane, Will and Kendall counties. Many landowners like Robb are turning to land trusts to protect areas from development. "People who want to keep their land as it is feel more comfortable turning it over to a local nonprofit organization like ours rather than the government, which they often feel they've already given enough to," says Brook McDonald, the foundation's executive director. Nevertheless, a land trust is often just an intermediate step between private and government ownership. According to a 1998 study by the Land Trust Alliance in Washington, D.C., Illinois has 31 land trusts, protecting 43,384 acres, of which more than 30,000 have been transferred to government entities for permanent protection. Nationally, local and regional land trusts have conserved nearly five million acres of open space since 1988, according to the alliance. Altogether, more than 1,200 land trusts claim about one million members and financial supporters. Often formed as grass-roots organizations, local trusts are able to hire lawyers and accountants to help owners unravel legal and financial problems so they can donate their land for conservation, McDonald says. "Sometimes, with the high tax assessment in this area, wealthy landowners can even come out ahead financially by donating to a land conservation organization rather than donating property to government or selling it." Currently, the Naperville-based foundation, which is itself situated on a protected 60-acre farm, is working to pass $70 million in bond referendums in the April 13 elections in Kane and Will counties. Approval by voters would protect 5,000 acres in Kane County and 6,500 acres in Will County. In 1997, DuPage County voters approved a $75 million tax referendum that added 2,000 acres to that county's forest preserve. Arlene Robb hopes the woods and meadows she played in as a child will someday be part of the Kendall County Forest Preserve. But for now, she knows the buckeye tree her great-grandfather picked up as a seedling in 1857 - as he and his wife traveled in a covered wagon from New York to their new farm in northern Illinois -will not have to give way to yet another subdivision. Beverley Scobell The state opens a new chapter in the fight to boost literacy Bridget Lamont, the former director of the state library and Ryan's new director of policy development, says the new office will "better coordinate the array of literacy initiatives and services going on across the state." Those include state and private programs to help increase literacy in the community, in the workplace and in prisons, as well as among parents, welfare clients and victims of domestic violence. Illinois is on par with the rest of the nation when it comes to illiteracy, according to Ryan aides. Still, a random survey of nearly 1,700 adults conducted in 1992 by the secretary of state's office revealed that 42 percent to 44 percent of respondents were unable to use the information contained in a sample paragraph to solve problems or answer questions. There is no timetable for the new office as yet, or any money in the budget. But Ryan aides say a program coordinator likely will be named this spring. Margaret Schroeder
For more information For information, contact http://www.sos.state.il.us/depts/ literacy/lit_home.html.
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