Fall 2012

LANDMARKS 12 FALL/WINTER

Newsletter for Kachemak Heritage Land Trust HIGHLIGHTS

Drying Wetlands Anchor River Project 2012 Successes Salmon in the Hills

Director’s Column

Marie McCarty Executive Director

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ur Conservation Director, Mandy Bernard, carted three fat flat-rate boxes to the post office on September 1 to submit our accreditation application to the National Land Trust Accreditation Commission. The boxes represent 2 years’ work, and we’re feeling a suite of emotions—happy, relieved, tired, and excited—as we apply to become a nationally accredited land trust. Becoming accredited will be the formal recognition that Kachemak Heritage Land Trust meets national quality standards within the land trust community. There are 1,700 land trusts across the country and 181 of these are accredited thus far.

For me, the most profound piece of our accreditation process was how hard the board and staff worked together to put our application together. The ability of both our board and staff to work hand-in-hand on this and all other aspects of our organization is a powerful indication to me of the strength of Kachemak Heritage Land Trust and our belief in the organization’s mission and direction.

You, as a supporter of Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, likewise play a key role in our success.

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Each of our board members reviewed draft policy and presented it to their peers on the board. Our Accreditation Team, a smaller group of board and staff, met regularly to review policy and ensure that we met each deadline. We reviewed our historic financial records, raised funds to pay for the staff time and the application fee, had a financial audit, revised our entire policy and procedures manual, and we have been scanning our most significant financial records and all of our land records. We have cloud storage for our documents, have a new office server with offsite backup, and have a finely tuned recordkeeping policy and implementation system. While none of this is tied to protecting a specific property, adhering to best management practices directly ties to our ability to fulfill our perpetual stewardship responsibilities.

Our hard work was supported by people like you who understand what it means to be a steward of land forever. While there is the onthe-ground component of monitoring land to ensure it is not harmed over time, there is also the paperwork required to ensure that each parcel we promise to protect has both the funds for stewardship and the paperwork necessary to defend it over time.

So while our accreditation work resulted in three fat flat-rate boxes, it really represents our promise to you to preserve land forever.

We’re excited to move into the next phase of providing the Kenai Peninsula with our professional land conservation services and again, thank you for believing in our mission. It’s an exciting time to be part of Kachemak Heritage Land Trust, and I invite you to consider increasing your support for our work, as we work to increase the pace of strategic private land conservation. 

KHLT Board Members Dotti Harness-Foster, President John Mouw, Vice President Larsen Klingel, Treasurer Scott Connelly, Secretary Donna Robertson Aderhold Marian Beck Nancy Lee-Evans Rachel Lord Sam Means

KHLT Staff Marie McCarty, Executive Director Mandy Bernard, Conservation Director Anne Cain, Development Coordinator Rick Cline, Accounting/Grant Manager Patrick Miller, Stewardship Coordinator

KHLT Contact Information Kachemak Heritage Land Trust 315 Klondike Avenue Homer, AK 99603 (907) 235-5263 | (907) 235-1503 (fax) www.KachemakLandTrust.org

Credits Cover photo © KHLT, M. Bernard Layout Design | Debi Bodett

CONTENTS DIRECTOR’S COLUMN.. . . . . . . . . . 1 THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE WELCOME TO KHLT!. . . . . . . . . . . . 2 DRYING WETLANDS ON THE KENAI PENINSULA. . . . . . 3 ANCHOR RIVER PROJECT PROTECTING OUR WATER AND SALMON HABITAT. . . . . . . . . 6 WHAT MOVES YOUR HEART?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 SALMON IN THE HILLS.. . . . . . . . . 9 LAND CONSERVATION LAST FOREVER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 KHLT ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MEMBERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 THANK YOU TO OUR BUSINESS MEMBERS.. . . . . . 10 THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Marie McCarty, Executive Director

www.KachemakLandTrust.org

KHLT APPLIES FOR LAND ACCREDITATION . . BACK COVER

Thank You for Your Service

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hank you to Sheryl Ohlsen.

Sheryl served as our Accounting Manager, working diligently and cheerfully on KHLT’s finances, and she led our Accreditation Team through the submission of our comprehensive application to the national land trust Accreditation Commission.

Sheryl Ohlsen Accounting Manager We are pleased that she is remaining on our Budget and Investment Committee, and appreciate her continuing keen eye for financial details. Many thanks for all of your hard work, and we wish you the best wishes in all of your endeavors.

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hank you to Jamie Grant.

Jamie served as our Development Coordinator, working hard with our Development Committee and staff on both our fundraising and outreach efforts.

Her keen graphic design eye and her background in business brought a new touch to Jamie Grant Development Coordinator KHLT, and one that we really appreciated and will continue to incorporate in our work.

Much luck at your new position with the State, we wish you all the best.

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Welcome to KHLT!

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elcome to Donna Robertson Aderhold, our newest Board member.

Donna is an environmental scientist for an engineering and environmental consulting firm, providing guidance on the regulatory process for a variety of proposed development projects throughout Alaska.

As a wildlife biologist she believes that land conservation is one of the most important things humans can do to ensure Donna Robertson Aderhold Board of Directors maintenance of healthy ecosystems for future generations. Donna is on the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve’s Community Council, the Homer library’s landscaping committee, and is a member of the professional organizations The Wildlife Society and Society of Wetland Scientists. Donna has served on various KHLT committees.

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elcome to Anne Cain. Anne is our new Development Coordinator.

Anne first appeared on the Alaska scene in 1964, attending Homer High School when her parents moved her from Texas as a teenager. During her stay, she developed an intense love of Alaska, and has returned numerous times. Anne has B.A. in English/ History from Texas A&M University-Corpus Anne Cain Christi, and majored in Secondary Education Development Coordinator at The University of Texas at Austin. After an early, voluntary retirement from her Technical Editor/Writer position with UT’s College of Engineering in 2005, she moved to Alaska to work publications contracts with Anchorage engineering firms (three Native Corporations, Crowley Maritime, and CH2M Hill), as well as Nuka Research and Planning Group on the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s Risk Assessment Project.

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elcome to Rick Cline. Rick is our new Accounting and Grants Manager.

Before finding Alaska Rick earned his Bachelor of Arts in Finance at the University of Santa Clara, worked as a Financial Analyst for ESL (a subsidiary of TRW), and taught English in Sapporo, Japan, while pursuing martial arts training in Kobayashi-ryu.

Arriving in Homer, Alaska by motorcycle in 1992, he was captured by the beauty Rick Cline of Kachemak Bay. For the past eight years, Accounting/Grant Manager he and his wife Charlene have owned and run the outstanding Homestead Restaurant.

 LANDMARKS • NEWSLETTER FOR KACHEMAK HERITAGE LAND TRUST • FALL/WINTER 2012

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A transect sample of 192 black spruce trees in this photo showed that the median tree age was 32 years. These trees are growing in a drying fen underlain by more than 16 feet of Sphagnum peat. The peat contained no logs, stumps or woody shrub roots, indicating that this is a “first time” forest growing on a formerly soggy peatland. Similar wood-free peatlands have been dated elsewhere in the central Peninsula to more than 18,000 years.

Photo shows the Coal Creek wetlands south of Soldotna, looking southeast from the Sterling Highway. photo © Ed Berg

Drying Wetlands on the Kenai Peninsula

By Ed Berg, PhD. Ed retired recently from the US Fish & Wildlife Service, where he served as the ecologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna since 1993.

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n the mid-1990’s I began seeing some large-scale ecological changes on the Kenai Peninsula. The most striking change was the massive die-off of mature upland spruce forests due to the spruce bark beetle infestation, especially on the southern Kenai. More subtle, however, was a general drying of the landscape. As part of my work as the ecologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, I spent a lot of time exploring the two million acres of the Refuge, which spans the western Kenai from Turnagain Arm to the south side of Kachemak Bay. 3

In my fieldwork I used two sets of USGS quad maps, one set dating from the 1950s and a more recent set from 1986. My first awareness of the landscape drying came from noticing that many of the small ponds shown in blue on the 1950s maps no longer appeared on the 1986 maps and were now grass-filled pans. I ran transects through some of these pans, and mapped the small spruce and hardwood seedlings popping up among the grass.

www.KachemakLandTrust.org

Old timers in the area confirmed my observations. A horse packer for moose hunters in the Mystery Hills described how it was hard to find water nowadays for his horses; his traditional streamlets and water holes had dried up. Others described how it was possible to drive 4WD pickups in the summer across wetlands in the Caribou Hills that had previously only been crossable by snow machine in the winter. Residents along the south leg of K-Beach Road described a shrub invasion of their wetlands that greatly improved berry picking. Those wetlands were now dry enough that berry pickers didn’t need rubber boots anymore.

Workers at the Marathon gas field have been driving Marathon Road northeast of the Kenai airport for decades; they described the vigorous expansion of black spruce “islands” in the large 6500-acre wetland complex between the airport and Beaver Creek. I compared the 1950s and 1996 aerial photos and saw that the black spruce islands were growing like rapidly expanding patches of mold on bread.

Many wetlands on the Kenai have halos of small black spruce around their perimeters. I was curious to know if these small trees were old stunted dwarfs, growing at the limit of their water tolerance, or were they young recruits now growing on a drier substrate? We ran 2-meter wide transects through three of these wetland perimeter halos, digging up all the seedlings and saplings and coring the larger trees with an increment borer to get tree-ring samples. In the digging process we discovered that there was no dead wood under these forests; no stumps or buried logs. These were “first time” forests.

Furthermore, the trees were young and vigorous, not stunted old guys. The median ages of trees at Marathon Road were 65 years, at Coal Creek 32 years (see photo), and at Brown’s Lake east of Funny River 76 years. The very oldest trees dated back to the 1850’s, which was the end of the Little Ice Age and the time when glaciers on the west side of the Kenai Mountains, such as Grewingk, began to retreat.

I became curious about the long-term scale of these changes: were we really seeing something new or were we simply in rather dry period, as part of a natural climatic cycle? Three graduate thesis projects with Prof. Roman Dial at Alaska Pacific University provided strong evidence that these changes are new, and that they reflect the general climate warming and drying occurring throughout Alaska and other northern latitude areas. For his MS thesis project Eric Klein picked 1113 random points on aerial photos from the 1950s and 1996. He classified the vegetation at each point as being wooded, open, wet or water. In the 40+ years between photos the wooded points increased from 57% to 73%, open points shrank from 31% to 20%, wet from 5% to 1%, and water from 7% to 6%. This

showed a strong “woodification” of the landscape with trees and shrubs colonizing previously open and wetland areas.

For her MS thesis Kacy McDonnell Hillman did a similar aerial photo study, this time adding 1968 photos. Using GIS she measured the open (treeless) wetland area at 11 sites, and found that open wetland loss between 1951 and 1968 was 6.2% per decade, and was 11.1% between 1968 and 1996. This indicated that the wetland drying was accelerating, almost doubling on a decadal scale.

Old timers in the area confirmed my observations. A horse packer for moose hunters in the Mystery Hills described how it was hard to find water nowadays for his horses; his traditional streamlets and water holes had dried up.

To look at the drying and woodification processes on a much longer time scale we took peat soil cores at 18 sites from Nikiski to Homer. Allana DeRuwe Drossus used these cores for her MS thesis on volcanic ash, but they also provided a look at the vegetation history of the wetlands which extended back more than 18,000 years. Most of the cores showed that these wetlands had been soggy fens dominated by Sphagnum moss and sedges; all the woody material was at the top of the cores, consisting of mostly live roots of surface shrubs. We aged the stems of one of the most abundant shrubs, dwarf birch, at three sites and found that their median age was 14 years. The fact that there were few dead shrub roots or stems down in the peat indicated that these shrub patches, like the black spruce halos, were “first time” colonists.

Ice from the last major glaciation began to retreat from the central Kenai lowlands about 18,000 years ago, and our oldest peat cores document peat accumulation starting at this time.

There has been at least one major warm period since then, called the Hypsithermal or Holocene Thermal Maximum occurring 9-11,500 years, and a general cooling of the climate over the last 5-6,000 years. Even the warm period, however, was not sufficiently dry to bring trees or shrubs into these

LANDMARKS • NEWSLETTER FOR KACHEMAK HERITAGE LAND TRUST • FALL/WINTER 2012

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(A) This graph shows the mean decline of 3.8 inches of “available water” after the 1968-69 drought. Available water is the water utilizable for rivers and lakes, plant and animal growth, and groundwater recharging. One can think of this water as the spendable part of the water budget, calculated as the income (precipitation or P) minus expenditures (potential evapotranspiration or PET).

(B) Gray bars show the changes in the two components (P and PET) of available water. Black bar shows the change in available water (P – PET). The primary cause for declining available water is 12% less annual rainfall (by 2.3 inches); the secondary cause is warmer summers with 10% more evapotranspiration (by 1.4 inches). Data are from the Kenai airport.

soggy fens; tree and shrub invasion has only occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age, and especially since the 1970s.

Weather records from the Kenai airport show a distinct turning point following a drought in 1968-69 (see graph). Basically the central Kenai has never recovered from this drought, and the continuing drought has accelerated the drying process which started at the end of the Little Ice Age. People often ask me if the filling in of ponds and the growth of forests in wetlands isn’t just a natural process of plant succession? Ecology textbooks describe classical pond-toforest succession starting with an open pond, then emergent aquatic plants and sedimentation, then peat formation in a wet fen, and finally trees and shrubs recruiting on the peat soil. My answer is, yes, this is classical succession but why is it happening now, at an accelerating rate, after 18,000 years of stable wet fens? Indeed, the same question can be asked anywhere in Alaska. Similar studies on the North Slope and in the Interior are documenting a variety of new processes that haven’t occurred for thousands of years such as melting permafrost, retreating glaciers, shrinkage of the Arctic icecap, and alder invasion of the tundra. These are the faces of climate change in Alaska.

There will be some practical consequences of the Kenai’s drying landscape, especially on the central and northern lowlands 5

where the drying is most intense due to the strong rain shadow of the Kenai Mountains. The black spruce colonizing the wetlands is a highly flammable fuel type. Wetlands that in the past were firebreaks separating beetle-killed spruce uplands will in time become fuel bridges that allow more rapid propagation of fire across the landscape. Add warmer air temperatures and drier fuels, and you have a recipe for more frequent and much larger fires. Reduced available water means less streamflow and groundwater recharge, so communities such as Nikiski, Homer and Anchor Point that depend on streams and wells will find their drinking water supply reduced.

The observed changes described here are small compared to the changes forecasted by climate models for the end of the century and beyond, but they can serve as warnings to land stewards and resource managers that the landscape is changing and that resources such as water should not be taken for granted.

Further information: Berg, E.E., K.D. McDonnell, R. Dial, and A. DeRuwe. 2009. Recent woody invasion of wetlands on the Kenai Peninsula Lowlands, south-central Alaska: a major regime shift after 18 000 years of wet Sphagnum–sedge peat recruitment.

Canadian Journal of Forest Research 39(11): 2033– 2046. 

www.KachemakLandTrust.org

Cold Water is Critical.

The survival and persistence of salmon is highly dependent on water temperature.

Research on the Anchor River identifies critical salmon habitat.

Thermal infrared imagery (left) with corresponding aerial image (right) showing cold water inputs (purple) to the mainstem of the Anchor River (orange).

Anchor River Project

photo © Cook Inletkeeper

Protecting our Water Quality and Salmon Habitat

By Sue Mauger, Cook Inletkeeper

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s water temperatures get warmer in many of Cook Inlet’s streams in the years ahead, cold water areas within a stream which are persistently colder than adjacent areas – will be critical to the survival and persistence of salmon. Cold-water fish, like salmon and trout, get stressed out in warm water and become increasingly vulnerable to pollution, predation, and disease. Deep pools, overhanging vegetation and undercut banks can be important cold-water habitats. Stream areas with groundwater interactions (i.e. springs and seeps) may also result in measurably cooler water. Mapping these coldwater stepping stones that are needed for salmon to make their way up and down otherwise warming streams is the first step towards protecting critical salmon habitat in this time of thermal change.

Cook Inletkeeper, in collaboration with the Homer Soil and Water Conservation District and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, began identifying critical habitat conditions for cool water along the Anchor River in 2006. Based on in-stream surveys, overhanging vegetation, which provided shade during the mid to late afternoon, provides some of the most significant cool water habitat for juvenile salmon.

In 2010, Cook Inletkeeper expanded this effort and incorporated state-of-the-art technology to map cold-water habitat using airborne thermal infrared (TIR) imagery along 34 miles of the

south fork of the Anchor River. This exciting technology is an effective method for mapping small-scale temperature patterns in streams. The TIR imagery provides a snapshot of stream temperatures at the time of the survey. And although temperature values change year-to-year, groundwater-fed cool water areas remain persistent over time. Even in the cool summer of 2010, the location and thermal influence of 18 tributaries, 23 seeps and springs, 11 sloughs, and 9 small side channels and drains is apparent in the imagery.

In 2012, Cook Inletkeeper will collect even more imagery along 30 miles on the north fork Anchor River and 12 miles on the lower Ninilchik River. With a treasure map of these cold spots, Kachemak Heritage Land Trust will then be able to identify land parcels with critical Chinook and Coho salmon habitat.

These parcels will be the focus for permanent conservation work. This goal can only be achieved through partnerships with willing landowners. A partnership of local organizations working together with individuals in the community provides a unique opportunity to link state-or-the-art science with conservation planning and land protection strategies designed for perpetual habitat conservation to protect our way of life and a valuable and precious resource that connects all life on the peninsula- the salmon. 

LANDMARKS • NEWSLETTER FOR KACHEMAK HERITAGE LAND TRUST • FALL/WINTER 2012

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www.KachemakLandTrust.org

What Moves

Your Heart?

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eople like places they love to remain the same forever, whether it’s the network of Forest Preserves near a childhood home or property Kachemak Heritage Land Trust owns along the Anchor River. For many, it’s about ensuring there are always places of refuge. There aren’t many organizations like KHLT set up to imagine so far into the future. It’s that long-term vision that forms the heart of KHLT, and as a KHLT supporter, one that likely is important to you.

This past summer, we received a huge vote of confidence in the form of a gift of $25,000 from a wonderful supporter. This anonymous donor wants the gift to be a catalyst to others to increase the pace of our ability to preserve land. This donor understands that permanent land protection takes money; and with this large financial commitment, this donor has cast a strong vote of confidence in KHLT. To honor this generous gift, we’ve set a fundraising goal to raise an additional $25,000 to support conserving the places that give meaning to all our lives. Please join our generous supporter by sending in an additional year-end gift to help us meet this goal.

Your gift will show how one great gift can encourage others and help us increase the pace of land conservation on the Kenai Peninsula!

It’s KHLT’s role to make sure treasured places remain intact for the future, providing places to simply sit and think, play, or remain wild.

Your year-end contribution will enable us to permanently protect important Kenai Peninsula fish and wildlife habitat and provide professional conservation services to landowners on the Kenai Peninsula. Please use the enclosed remittance envelope to donate today. Whatever amount you and your family choose to contribute will be greatly appreciated. 

photo © KHLT, G. Goforth

Your year-end contribution will enable us to permanently protect important Kenai Peninsula fish and wildlife habitat and provide professional conservation services to landowners on the Kenai Peninsula. photo © KHLT, M. Bernard

LANDMARKS • NEWSLETTER FOR KACHEMAK HERITAGE LAND TRUST • FALL/WINTER 2012

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Leading research points to juvenile salmon in unassuming places

Salmon in the Hills

By Coowe Walker, Kachemak Bay Research Reserve

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ook at the picture below. Do you notice the small stream meandering through the wildflower meadow? Would you guess that hundreds of young salmon are living there?

traffic and development. Do you have property where there is a headwater stream? If so, then you likely have salmon in your hills.

With the new science that is emerging, KHLT and willing landowners can take steps to ensure that essential elements of the landscape are maintained to keep our headwaters, and salmon, healthy.

Since 2006, the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve has been leading research efforts photo © KBRR to learn about these often remote, and previously unstudied areas. We have learned that these tiny streams at the uppermost reaches of our watersheds are, in fact, very important nurseries for juvenile salmon. These streams are the headwaters that are the origin of our rivers.

Did you know that the headwater streams for many of the Rivers along the Lower Kenai Peninsula are unique areas to find thriving salmon habitat? Most headwater streams are too small, steep, and quickly flowing and are not conducive to juvenile fish rearing. Our headwater streams are critical to juvenile salmon habitat. We have found more than ¼ million juvenile salmonids that are using these streams!

What is so important about the headwater streams of the lower Kenai Peninsula?

In most places, headwaters have been considered fishless because headwaters in most regions are small, steep, quickly flowing systems that aren’t conducive to fish. The headwaters of the Anchor River, Deep Creek, Stariski Creek and Ninilchik River are quite different in that they are important fish rearing habitat. They are also predominantly located on private property, which makes them susceptible to impacts from high 9

Why are the landscapes of the lower Kenai Peninsula so productive as salmon habitat? Our research on nutrients and streamside vegetation, shows that nitrogen coming from alders in the surrounding area is a significant driver of stream productivity. Alder is a ‘nitrogen-fixer’, which means that the root systems of alder are able to take atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into a form that is biologically useful. Not many plants in our landscapes can do this. As nitrogen is typically in short supply in our aquatic systems, inputs of this basic nutrient become very important to promoting algal growth, which fuels stream insect (mayflies, caddisflies, etc.) production, which in turn moves up through the foodweb as food for young salmon.

We now know that alder is important keeping our headwaters healthy.

Our research has also shown that the tall grasses that grow next to the headwaters are an important food base. The grass flops over into the stream, where it becomes the framework for algae to grow on, which the insects then eat, ultimately becoming food for young salmon. We call this ‘grass fed salmon’!

This research is unraveling how our landscapes are connected to headwater streams. Alders in the surrounding area provide important nutrients; grass by the streamside provides a foundation for the food web. We are continuing our research, and as we learn, we will share our findings. By understanding how our landscapes are connected to headwaters, we can make sure that we protect the essential elements of the landscape that are most important to young salmon. As an informed landowner, you are important for maintaining healthy headwater nurseries for young salmon. 

www.KachemakLandTrust.org

Land Conservation Lasts Forever

Thank to our Business Members

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lease consider making a lasting gift to Kachemak Heritage Land Trust in your estate plans, included either through your will or trust, or through a gift of life insurance.

For more information on how to make a legacy gift to Kachemak Heritage Land Trust please call or email Marie McCarty at (907) 235-5263, marie@kachemaklandtrust.org.

KHLT Annual Meeting of the Members

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his year’s KHLT Annual Meeting of Members will take place on November 29th at the Islands and Ocean Visitor Center beginning at 5:30 PM. We will hold our Annual Meeting, finish the voting process, and hold a Board of Directors meeting. The two issues that require voting are the Board Director re-election and Bylaw amendment. Marian Beck and Larsen Klingel are each running again for a seat on the Board of Directors.

The theme for this year’s Annual Meeting is: “Local Conservation, Global Impact: How Birds Tie Alaska to the World.” Our speaker will be Melanie Smith, Landscape Ecologist with Audubon Alaska. The event will focus on current issues facing Homer and the Kenai Peninsula’s bird populations, and how these issues tie into broader global bird issues. 

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2-2 Tango Alaska Rivers Company Alaska Timberframe Alderfer Group Applied Archaeology International Annette and Marvin Bellamy Best Western Bidarka Inn Bobcat Services Chihuly’s Charters Cosmic Kitchen, Inc. Derry and Associates Eayrs Plumbing and Heating ERA Aviation Grant Aviation Andrew Haas and Terri Spigelmyer Law Offices Hallo Bay Wilderness Camp HDR Engineering, Alaska Home Run Oil Homer Electric Association Homer Saw and Cycle Homer Veterinary Clinic Homer’s Jeans Jay-Brant General Contractors Kachemak Bay Ferry, Inc. Janet Klein

»» Law Offices of Daniel »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »» »»

Westerburg Loopy Lupine Distribution LLC Marine Services of Alaska Moose Run Metalsmiths Wilderness Garden Day Spa North Wind Home Collection Oasis Environmental, Inc./ ERM Preventive Dental Services Seaman’s Adventures Seaside Farms SeaULater Charters Alaska Seldovia Bay Ferry Spenard Builders Supply Ulmer’s Drug and Hardware Wild North Photography

Thank to our Funders

Roger Pearson, former KHLT Board member

photo © KHLT

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Alaska Community Foundation Alaska State Historic Preservation Office Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund Bullitt Foundation Community Foundation Boulder County ESRI Homer Foundation, City of Homer Homer Foundation, KLEP Fund Homer Foundation, Tin Roof Fund Land Trust Alliance Pikes Peak Foundation, the Webb Family Fund People’s Garden, USDA Pacific Coast Joint Venture Rasmuson Foundation True North Foundation U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Coastal Program US Fish and Wildlife Services Partners for Wildlife Vanguard Foundation

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315 Klondike Avenue Homer, Alaska 99603

Non-Profit PRESORT STANDARD U.S. Postage PAID Homer, Alaska Permit #67

Preserving, for public benefit, land on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula with significant natural, recreational, or cultural values by working with willing landowners.

www.KachemakLandTrust.org Printed on 50% recycled paper.

KHLT Applies for Land Accreditation!

K achemak Heritage Land Trust, a regional land trust founded in 1989, is pleased to be applying for accreditation with the Land Trust Accreditation Commission. The land trust accreditation program recognizes organizations that meet national quality standards for protecting natural places and working land forever.

photo Š KHLT

For more information: Please read the Public Notice of Application For Land Trust Alliance Accreditation @ www.KHLT.org