What Land Protection Means to Me: From Conservation to Stewardship

Written by T. Schulz-Franco, Lands Coordinator

For most of my life, “conservation” was something I understood through the lens that many of us were taught: protect the land by drawing boundaries around it. Keep nature safe by keeping it separate. Fence it, defend it, acquire it, and safeguard it in perpetuity. 

But the more time I spend working in this field, listening, learning, experiencing and walking alongside communities and host Nations, the more it becomes apparent that the future of ‘conservation’ is not about fortress thinking. The future of ‘conservation’ is stewardship. It’s not simply about ownership, isolation, or separation from the natural world. 

It’s about relationship. 

It’s about stewardship rooted in reciprocity, humility, relationships and community. It’s about the understanding that land, species, and people are inseparable, and that effective safeguards depend on the strength of our relationships with all three. 

As a Land Trust, the way we understand our responsibility to the land, waters and communities that call it home, is changing. Today, land stewardship means working with people, not simply within their territories. It means asking, not assuming, what stewardship looks like from Indigenous, community and collaborators’ perspectives alike. It means rejecting the harmful idea that nature must be kept apart from us and instead embracing the truth that long-term stewardship depends on reciprocity, collaboration, culture, community, and care. 

Photograph by T. Schulz-Franco.