Rate My Land

We are losing plants and animals at alarming rates! We need to increase our conservation efforts, but there is a major roadblock. We don’t know what it is we are conserving! Globally, we know less than a third of all the creatures that live on the earth. In the United States, we have many holes in our data; we are unclear about population sizes or where critters are living. We have approximations and best guesses based on data from public lands, but 87% of the land in the eastern U.S. is privately owned and up to half of all endangered plants and animals live solely on private land. Conservation cannot be done without sound understanding of what is on the land—private land. The first step to making conservation happen on private lands is accessing these private lands to figure out what species are there and how we can best protect them. We need to encourage and create incentives for private landowners to have their land formally surveyed. Only then, will we begin to address this most pressing concern facing conservation in the U.S. Rate My Land is a practical, first-step solution to removing a roadblock and engaging landowners to help save rare species.

Our goal is to create a social norm where it is commonplace and esteemed for private landowners to have their land biologically surveyed. Will you help spread the word?