At the end of May, Ken Mirr, our leading ranch broker in conservation properties for sale, was a panelist for the 2011 Conservation Development Workshop, an educational event put on by the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at Colorado State University. In addition to taking questions from the audience and moderators, Ken was asked to answer the following questions:
- From your perspective, how would you define success in a conservation development project?
- What do you think are the key barriers and opportunities to more widespread implementation of conservation development?
- What do you envision as the future of conservation development?
According to the workshop, conservation development is defined as a project that combines land protection and land development while providing functional protection for natural resources. The goal of the workshop was to better understand how practitioners view conservation development and to discuss what they need to know to be more effective and engaged in their practice of conservation and/or development. Other panelists for the workshop came from Colorado’s planning, regulation and certification, as well as land development and land conservation communities.