Can't name every tree? Good.
You're still a Conservationist
APRIL 2026
I became a conservationist before I knew what conservation was.
What I knew was the way certain places made me feel: a trail, a creek, a patch of woods I wanted to return to again and again. I didn’t have the words yet for what I was experiencing or why it mattered. I just knew those places were worth something, and that something in me needed to protect them.
When I started at Piedmont Land Conservancy as an intern, I still didn’t know much of the science. I couldn’t name half of what I was looking at. But when I stood beneath a Hackberry tree in winter and watched birds working through its remaining fruit, the sunlight coming through the bare branches, I felt it. That quiet, specific kind of joy that only comes from being part of a living place.
You don’t need a field guide for that. You just need to pay attention.
As I’ve learned more over the years, the science has deepened everything. I understand more of how it all connects. How one tree, one creek, one meadow is never really alone.
But the love came first. And I think that’s true for most of us. You don’t have to know the life cycle of a trillium to know that we need these places. Not just for the occasional walk, but for everything: clean water, food, medicine, the air we breathe. It all starts with land.
And more and more of it is disappearing.
Everyone seems to have a version of this story: the forest you drove past every day, gone. The field where you played as a kid, paved over. Development is inevitable. People need places to live, and we understand that. What’s harder to stomach is the pace.
North Carolina is losing farmland at a staggering pace with nearly 287,000 acres gone in just the last decade (Source). But it’s not only farms. Our state loses 4,500 acres of urban tree canopy every year (Source). NC has lost nearly half our historic wetlands (Source). And projections show more than 2 million additional acres will be developed in the next 30 years (Source). All while our state continues to be one of the fastest-growing in the country. The land is disappearing faster than most people realize, and it doesn’t come back.
Back in 1990, a group of concerned citizens sat around a table and asked: what can we do?
Against considerable odds, they founded Piedmont Land Conservancy. Since that day, the movement has grown steadily, reaching more and more people who love this land and are willing to fight for it. Since 1990, PLC has protected over 33,000 acres. That’s 51 square miles. Nearly half the footprint of Winston-Salem. Forty percent of Greensboro. Protected. Forever.
We are making real, lasting progress.
But here’s what my colleagues have learned, some working in land conservation for 20+ years: the work we do today is easier and cheaper than the work we’ll need to do in ten years. As development accelerates, land prices rise, parcels shrink, and the window to act closes faster. Every acre we protect now is one we don’t have to fight harder for later.
This Earth Day, I'm asking you to be part of what happens next.
Right now, there’s an opportunity to make your gift go further. An anonymous donor has pledged to match up to $10,000, dollar for dollar, for every first-time gift to PLC made between Earth Day and April 30th. If you’ve never given before, your gift will be doubled. If you know someone who hasn’t yet, this is the moment to tell them.
A groundswell of local donors are what make this possible. State grants and foundations help us stretch every dollar, but it’s the support from this community, from people who simply love this place, that drives what we can actually accomplish.
You don’t have to know the name of the tree to know it’s worth saving. You just have to care about this place enough to act.
Make your Earth Day gift here:
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart and from every acre we’ve had the privilege of protecting together.
Sincerely,
