Blog
Time to double down on commitment to BIPOC groups
Never have nonprofit organizations needed our support more, especially those that center Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. We asked Climate Land Leaders which groups they support with their dollars, and here’s the 2025 list. Check out these groups doing wonderful heart work. 1619 Freedom School All Square Appetite for Change Black Iowa News…
Strengthening a community of land stewards: Our 2025-26 Strategic Plan
At Climate Land Leaders, we envision a world where plant, animal, and human communities thrive through our land stewardship. How will we get there? Our new Strategic Plan provides the roadmap for the next two years. Our mission: to provide community and support for land stewards creating climate resiliency. We are guided by a set…
Bryan Simon on our “vital role”
Climate Land Leader Bryan Simon is owner/operator of Lakeside Prairie Farm, and has a B.A. in Biology from University of Minnesota Morris and a M.S. in Ecology from South Dakota State University. Lakeside Prairie Farm currently offers targeted goat grazing to control invasive species and custom grazes cattle. The land’s most defining feature is the…
If I want to address the climate crisis on my land, what are the top climate solutions?
by Oliver Luker* As a landowner with a keen interest in addressing the climate crisis, this is a question that I have struggled with myself. The moral dimensions alone can be considerable – what is the best that I can do with my land is a very different question from the very best that the…
“One of the best jobs on Earth”
Congratulations to Iowa farmer and Climate Land Leader Wendy Johnson, who received the 2024 Iowa Leopold Conservation Award! Wendy was nominated by fellow Climate Land Leaders Maggie McQuown and Seth Watkins. Along with her family, Wendy stewards Center View Farms and Jóia Food and Fiber Farm in Floyd County, IA. Wendy shared the following remarks…
Liz Garst on prairie planting, forest management and more
During Summer 2024, Climate Land Leaders met up in Central Iowa at Whiterock Conservancy. There Liz Garst and her partner, Darwin Pierce, gave the land leaders a gift: Insights into their lifetimes of observing, working and restoring the land around them. We asked Liz to expand on some of her “place-based knowledge.” A banker, activist…
The problem is the solution: Nature-based adaptation as mitigation
By Oliver Luker* In 2022, we discovered a degraded fen on our property in McHenry County, Illinois. Originally transformed in the 1960s into a fishing and camping site, disturbances to the water table have led to multiple water channeling issues. The fen, once vibrant, is now overrun by invasive species, with nettles as its only…
Applying a risk framework to CO2 pipelines
Guest blog by Climate Land Leader and Iowa landowner Angie Smith Harris, who worked in several areas of risk and project management throughout her professional career, including analyzing the financial stability and viability of bank holding companies and developing risk control frameworks and mitigation plans for Fortune 500 companies.
Graze. Not too much. Mostly regeneratively.
Recently Jonathan Foley of Project Drawdown released a piece “Regenerative grazing is overhyped. We should do it anyway.” He wrote that some suggest raising regenerative beef is the climate “silver bullet” the food sector needs. However, Foley says, “the climate benefits are often smaller than claimed and only work under limited circumstances…. Regenerative grazing has…