Conservation leader Peter Stein named Kingsbury Browne Fellow at Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Program honors Boston attorney who helped create the Land Trust Alliance

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Peter Stein, a leader in forests and rural lands conservation and managing director of Lyme Timber Co, was named the Kingsbury Browne Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Stein, who previously was senior vice president at the Trust for Public Land, was also named the winner of the Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award by the Land Trust Alliance in recognition of outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation. 

The announcements were made at the Land Trust Alliance's Rally 2012: The National Land Conservation Conference, in Salt Lake City, a gathering that marked the 30^th anniversary of the Land Trust Alliance. The Kingsbury Browne fellowship and award is named for the Boston tax lawyer whose gathering of conservation leaders from across the country in 1982 at the Lincoln Institute evolved into the Land Trust Alliance, today representing more than 1,700 land trusts.    

The Lincoln Institute has remained active in land conservation,most recently publishing the Policy Focus Report Large Landscape Conservation and helping establish a new group of leaders and innovators, The Practitioners Network for Large Landscape Conservation, to continue to be on the forefront of today's conservation strategies.  

Stein has been providing leadership in the development and structuring of conservation-oriented forestland and rural land purchases and dispositions since joining Lyme Timber in 1990. He also manages the company's conservation advisory business. At the Trust for Public Land, he directed TPL's conservation real estate acquisitions in the Northeast and Midwest. He lectures extensively at graduate schools and professional conferences on conservation investment schemes and strategies, and is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Appalachian Mountain Club and serves on the Boards of Island Press, National Alliance of Forestland Owners, the Forest History Society, and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. In addition, he is a former board chair of the Land Trust Alliance, and a founding Commissioner of the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, and serves as a member of the Advisory Board of Rose Smart Growth Real Estate Fund No. 1. He earned a B.A. with Highest Honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1975 and was a Loeb Fellow and received a Certificate in Advanced Environmental Studies from Harvard University in 1981. In the fellowship, Stein will engage in research, writing and mentoring, under the Lincoln Institute's Department of Planning and Urban Form.   

The Kingsbury Browne fellowship and award is in seventh year. Previous winners were Audrey C. Rust, president emeritus of the Peninsula Open Space Trust based in Palo Alto, Calif.; Jay Espy, executive director of the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation; Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society; Laurie A. Wayburn, co-founder of the Pacific Forest Trust; Mark Ackelson, president of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation; and Darby Bradley, president of the Vermont Land Trust.    

Kingsbury Browne, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the Land Trust Alliance have been closely intertwined. In 1980, as a fellow at the Lincoln Institute, Browne first envisioned a network of land conservation trusts, and convened conservation leaders at the Lincoln Institute in 1982. That gathering led to the formation of the national Land Trust Exchange, which was later renamed the Land Trust Alliance. Browne is considered the father of America's modern land trust movement, a network of land trusts operating in every state of the nation. Together these land trusts have conserved more than 37 million acres, an area the size of New England.     

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy initiated the Kingsbury Browne Fellowship in association with the Land Trust Alliance, which offered the accompanying Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award, in 2006. Winners are chosen on the basis of honoring lifetime contributions to the field of land conservation and work reflecting the values that Kingsbury Browne brought to his own seminal achievements.    

The Land Trust Alliance is a national conservation organization based in Washington, D.C. that works in three ways to save the places people love -- increasing the pace of conservation, so more land and natural resources get protected; enhancing the quality of conservation, so the most important lands get protected using best practices; and ensuring the permanence of conservation through legislation and resources to protect land over time. 

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a leading resource for key issues concerning the use, regulation, and taxation of land. Providing high quality education and research, the Institute strives to improve public dialogue and decisions about land policy.

SOURCE Lincoln Institute of Land Policy