World Land Trust

[CβL]

Basically the WLT is a charity, that collects funds to purchase threatened land all over the world (collecting on behalf of the local management agency). Apparently it's only about $150 dollars to buy an acre of rainforest land. Is this a worthy charity?

WLT Buy an Acre

World Land Trust (WLT) is saving threatened habitats acre by acre, creating protected nature reserves across the world. You can help us create new or extend existing reserves by buying acres and providing more safe havens for some of Earth's most vulnerable wildlife. Help us save real acres, in real places.

Buy an Acre »

Buy an Acre as a Gift »

What is Buy an Acre?

WLT works with partner organisations across the world to help fund land purchase and create nature reserves to protect threatened habitats and wildlife. In some countries, we can save an acre of threatened habitat for an average of £100. Here we offer our supporters the opportunity to buy acres and help us create or extend our reserves. You can donate as little £25 and buy quarter of an acre – helping us save the planet’s threatened wilderness.

Where will your Buy an Acre donation go?

Donations to Buy an Acre go to our in-country partners who purchase and secure rainforest and other wildlife habitats in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. Your donation will help create permanently protected nature reserves.

• £100 saves one acre (4,000 square metres)
• £50 saves half an acre (2,000 square metres)
• £25 save 1/4 an acre (1,000 square metres).

Why donate to Buy an Acre?

• Your donation will save real acres, in real places
• It will turn threatened habitats into protected nature reserves
• By saving acres, you will protect all the wildlife it contains

http://www.worldlandtrust.org/projects/index

[bogfrog]

it sounds really good, but i instantly wonder what is in place to ensure the land you purchase is actually protected?

...

is it kinda obscure, like, "you bought an acre somewhere in colombia"

or "you bought this acre here with these GPS co-cordinates and you can look at the patch of land on google maps from time to time to ensure the trees havent been cut down by some rouge logging company"

[Scarecrow]

Apparently it's only about $150 dollars to buy an acre of rainforest land

Only $150 an acre???? Why hasn't anyone bought a bunch of land and started a sustainable community???

[bogfrog]

Its quite likely to be a "theoretical ownership"... Similar to how someone can buy a few goats through a charity in your name and donate them to an impoverished village, you don't actually get the goats but instead the feeling of satisfaction in knowing that the act has created a change somewhere out there.

[gtarman]

Only $150 an acre???? Why hasn't anyone bought a bunch of land and started a sustainable community???

Because that's usually only the bulk land price. Even in Australia you can buy land for a few hundred an acre, with the proviso that you buy thousands of them. The system is structured to make small land purchases much more difficult and expensive. Basically to keep the "little guys" out.

Although it may be that in some third world countries, forested land that is seen as difficult to profit from could conceivably be sold at very low prices individually, though I doubt $150 would cover it.

EDIT: and I think Bogfrog is right, there would most definitely be limitations of the "ownership"...you most likely would have no right to use the land, and they may even be doing the dodgy and selling off the timber rights or something like that to a third party. But I am ridiculously cynical at times...

Edited May 9, 2013 by gtarman

[Scarecrow]

Obviously buying land through this charity would be limited ownership, but if they have the option to buy it at that price I can't see why other people wouldn't be able to.

[CβL]

To make it clear, I wouldn't be in it to get the land for myself. But to protect these rare environments to keep the planet alive. The planet needs rainforests more than I need a vacation house. I think that an hectare of rainforest is probably way more important than 80% of individual people in the grand scheme of things. We people think we're way too important.

Secondly, they do apparently use the local agencies and do have park rangers and such. I was worried about that too. Because it's no point owning a huge tract of the Amazon if it's going to get logged illegally.

[gtarman]

Obviously buying land through this charity would be limited ownership, but if they have the option to buy it at that price I can't see why other people wouldn't be able to.

You probably could in all honesty, but I'd say it's almost definitely a case of buying in bulk, so you'd have to buy hundreds of acres which would negate the savings as it does here in Australia...although it will still work out somewhat cheaper over there just because Australia has some of the most expensive land and real estate in the world.

Charities like to break down your donation amounts and tell you that this equals that, but there's no way they just wait for a donation to roll in, then go out and purchase one acre or a quarter acre individually...they'd be buying the land en masse hundreds and thousands of acres at a time I'd say, then just using the average costs as a guideline to what a donation will get you.

EDIT: looking back I don't think it's actually any kind of ownership at all through the charity - you're funding their organisation's ownership via a charitable donation.

Edited May 9, 2013 by gtarman

[CβL]

That's correct. You don't own anything. This is about protecting land for a meagre sum of money. How else can we save this land? Other than to all unite and rise up against the corporations (lol! like that'll happen with most people still amped about what's on TV tomorrow night).

I know in NZ - if you bought land you would still be forced to pay rates (probably the case in Aus too). So they've practically forced you to make the land into a capitalist venture (tourism, farming, or whatever), or forever rely on people's donations to pay rent (unreliable at best - if people will barely donate to buy a piece of land on behalf [with a certificate], then will they donate to pay for a park ranger? Not in the same numbers I should think). A horrible situation. You could rescue the land, and then lose funds and the land gets swept up and cleared again.
Other option - give to the conservation department... which are still the long arm of the government, and can easily give the land to roading of housing projects as the government sees fit.

I do not see a way in the current system to protect land for a longish period of time. Does anyone else?

[gtarman]

It also sucks from a housing perspective...until last year I thought that if you bought land that was it, you'd escaped the system and could live as you please. Then I found out about rates (having never owned land before I didn't know how it worked), and that the government reserves the "right" to "resume" their ownership of your land for state purposes. They also keep the mineral rights and all that jazz so they can sell gas or anything else on your property.

If we can't even occupy the land for ourselves long term, and if the governments are so open-handed with taking what they want even fom land that a person calls home, it leaves me with little hope for conservation reserves unfortunately. The uprising thing sounds like a good idea.