How You Can Help
Watershed Agricultural Council Conservation Easement Stewardship Fund
Safeguard the rural landscape and family farms with your donation.
Click here to donate with our print and mail form.
Farmland, clean water and a way of life. All three are dependent on a thriving agricultural community that is threatened by rising land prices and development. Safeguard these irreplaceable resources--our rural landscape and its family farms-by protecting regional farmlands and working landscapes through this Fund.
In partnership with New York City, the Watershed Agricultural Council conserves farmland as part of a long-term strategy to insure green space for the future protection of the water supply. Watershed communities benefit from conservation easements that set aside important fertile land for farming, while over 9-million New York residents are assured that sprawl will not degrade the water supply.
Through a unique agricultural conservation easement with the Watershed Agricultural Council, landowners can permanently protect their farmland and clean water while preserving their right to practice farming and forestry. That's because we purchase the development rights only from farms with a pollution prevention plan that addresses risks to our water supply. With the sale or donation of an agricultural easement to the Council, farmers can re-invest in their business, transfer the farm to the next generation or retire, while the farmland remains undeveloped forever.
When we protect a farm, we preserve a way of life. For generations, people in the Catskills have appreciated the rural character of the region's undeveloped landscape: a beautiful patchwork of farm and forestland run through with cool mountain streams. To work and live in an active farming community is to be a part of a vibrant landscape where farmers milk cows, grow hay and tap maple trees. Looking towards the future, Catskill farmers are growing new markets with specialty food crops like organic vegetables, grass-fed beef and poultry and farmstead cheese.
When the Watershed Agricultural Council acquires a conservation easement, we become a partner in the stewardship of that land. Our responsibility includes an ongoing commitment to monitor, defend, and enforce the easement into the future—for the next generation of farmers and water consumers.
Watershed Agricultural Council, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations are tax deductible to the full extent of the law. A copy of the Watershed Agricultural Council's latest annual report may be obtained from the organization or from the New York State Attorney General's Charities Bureau, Attn: FOIL Officer, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
Unless otherwise restricted by the gift instrument Community Focus | Statewide Impact | National Network pursuant to paragraph (B) of Section 553 of the Notfor-Profit Corporation Law, the Institution may expend so much of an Endowment Fund as it deems prudent after considering the factors set forth in paragraph (A) of Section 553 of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law.
