 The Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative assists conservation organizations in New York and Cumberland County to acquire and manage their land by providing professionals, support services and networking opportunities. Leslie McVane spoke with the group's executive director, Jessica Burton, about the ways the collaborative strengthens the ties between its members. Well, Jess, the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative is a recently formed group. Tell us a little bit about it. Yes, the Southern Maine Conservation Collaborative. We started January of this year, and we are a service center that is committed to providing support services to conservation organizations in Cumberland and New York County. So we're membership-based. The organizations become members, and we have nine organizations. They are all land trusts, and they are mostly Cumberland County, but we have one from York County who have joined. And hope to add more. Oh, yeah. Our goal is to have a membership of 30, 40 organizations conservation-related, so not only land trusts, but other organizations working in the conservation field. But primarily your interest is in preserving land. That's correct. So you're working to preserve and protect and steward land in this region. And now when you say you're there to assist these organizations in doing that, what does that mean exactly? Well, right now there's sort of a terminology around back office, back office tasks, and building efficiencies around that. Non-profits, and this could be said probably across the board, whatever the business is, there are certain tasks that every organization has to do. And because of that, there is certainly room for efficiency and collaboration. Many of the organizations with whom we work are very small and mostly run by volunteers. And a lot of these back office are sort of the slog of the work. It's not the reason people get involved. They want to be out on the land. They want to work with the communities. They want to be building trails. They want to be protecting the land. So what we offer is the behind the scenes support around organizational sustainability and sort of the typical stuff. And it gives them a central location to have an office and files and all of that. If that's something that they need help with, yes. What we're really trying to do in this first year is to determine the type of work and the needs that each land trust has. And from that to build the efficiency. So looking for the similarities in their need. And what we're hearing is that in addition to these sort of task, the specific tasks that they may need help with with mailings or with design or with newsletters, they're also looking for some help in building their capacity. And that's around practice. It's around policy. It's around the framework of what is the building block, basically, of these organizations. And what these organizations need to last as long as the land. So that's what we're here for. Well, and along with that, you're doing informational gatherings. That's correct. And you've had two so far. One was with Portland trails. That's correct. And the second was with Broadturn Farm, which I went to. Right. It's our role in trust. Yes, exactly. And that was really exciting talking about a working farm that is under the land trust umbrella. You had more coming up. That's correct. Yeah, additional to the service programs and projects that we're providing to the land trust, we're also trying to build some networking and sort of a sense of holding hands and moving forward together. And that starts with relationship building and sharing. And so Portland trails presented on their stewardship program, which is phenomenal and great and such a good model. And then Scarborough Land Trust shared with us their story about the farm. Many of the land trusts that we work with have farm under their protection, want farms. This was a great story. Our next one will be on invasive species and Oceanside. One of the board members from Oceanside is an expert, Bob Bittenbender, working at Maine at Audubon. He's going to share some of his tactics and all the land trusts are going to learn from that. So where will that be? The date and location are to be determined. Right. But that's something certainly not just, I mean, everybody should be concerned with. Right. Is it open to the public? These right now for this year, they are a benefit to our members. So those organizations that are paying their membership fee are having access to these opportunities. Well, for other organizations who might want to get involved, we've got to wrap this. How can they get in touch with you and find out more about becoming involved in this? Yes. So we have a website, which is really great. It's www.southernmainconservation.org, which is great. And then we also have an office on Commercial Street. Our phone number is 699-2989. Terrific. And we'd be happy to hear from any and all. I think it's wonderful. Thank you, Jess, for being here. Thank you very much for having me.