Why Defense of Place: Threats to Permanence

A Pact of Permanence - Our Promise to Future Generations

Defense of Place was established in 1997 in response to a troubling trend - more and more land designated as parks, nature preserves, wilderness, and wildlife refuges is being sold and developed.

In an effort to balance shrinking budgets or to make way for "progress," elected officials and private institutions are selling off land dedicated to remain forever wild. When they do, they break a pact with future generations.

Defense of Place is committed to ensuring our protected lands stay that way. The nation's only organization devoted to assuring that parks, open space, and wildlife refuges are protected in perpetuity, Defense of Place stands not only for threatened places, but also for the principle of law - the Public Trust Doctrine - that provides for their protection.

The Public Trust recognizes that certain public assets, such as land and water are so valuable to the public that they cannot be sold or given away. Rather they are to be managed for the benefit of all people for all time.

Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms to protect land from development, such as conservation easements, are sometimes not effectively monitored or enforced. In other instances, land donated for conservation is sold for other uses once the donor has passed on.

Defense of Place is a leading voice for protected land. As a watchdog and ally in local efforts to defend land, we regularly come to the aid of citizen activists that resist subdivisions, roads, trains, and other threats to permanence of protected land.

Defense of Place has won a number of important victories. Ultimately, however, it isn't possible to rally around each piece of threatened land. Our goal is to make Americans aware of the vast landscapes they own and the need to protect them.

We aspire to make "permanence" an American value. In the America we envision, selling off the "commons" - our shared heritage - would be out of the question.

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