Two Decades of Acres for America: A Nationwide Conservation Partnership

In 2005, The Conservation Fund worked with local partners to protect more than 325,000 acres of working forest across Washington, Aroostook, and Penobscot counties in Maine, one of the largest land protection agreements in U.S. history at the time. The deal kept the land in active, sustainable timber production and guaranteed permanent public access for hunting, fishing, and paddling across one of the Northeast’s most significant blocks of intact habitat. Acres for America provided early funding, one of the program’s first major wins after its 2005 launch. Learn more. 

Tripling Protected Land Around Georgia’s Amicalola Falls  

In 2023, The Conservation Fund added more than 2,000 acres to Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area in north Georgia, more than tripling the state’s protected land around Amicalola Falls State Park, home to Georgia’s tallest waterfall and the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. The property was at risk of being subdivided for development before The Conservation Fund stepped in, and it now safeguards headwater streams in the Etowah River basin, home to the endangered Etowah darter, along with wildlife corridors connecting the park to the neighboring Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest. Acres for America was one of several funders that helped make the addition possible. Learn more. 

Protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay, a World-Famous Salmon Fishery 

In 2022, The Conservation Fund and Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust permanently protected more than 44,000 acres on Alaska’s Iliamna Lake, land owned by the Pedro Bay Corporation, an Alaska Native village corporation whose shareholders have depended on Bristol Bay’s salmon runs for generations. The project safeguards prime spawning habitat in the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, protects subsistence and cultural practices central to the community, and blocks a proposed mining road that would have cut through the watershed. Acres for America funding helped secure this win, adding Bristol Bay to our growing list of Alaska Native conservation partnerships. Learn more. 

Securing Wisconsin’s Largest Unprotected Forest 

In 2024, The Conservation Fund completed the protection of nearly 70,000 acres of Pelican River Forest, the largest privately owned unprotected block of forest remaining in Wisconsin. It supports hundreds of forestry jobs, clean water for the upper Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, and habitat for wolves, black bear, and bald eagles, while storing roughly 19 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, comparable to the annual emissions of more than four million passenger vehicles. Acres for America, alongside the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program, helped make the protection possible, keeping this working forest in production and open to the public. Learn more. 

A Growing List of Places, Twenty Years and Counting 

These four projects are just a sample of a much longer list. Over twenty years, Acres for America has also backed The Conservation Fund’s work protecting nearly 188,000 acres of Northwoods timberland around Minnesota’s UPM Blandin paper mill, among many other projects across the country. Walmart renewed its commitment to the program for another 10 years in 2024, meaning this partnership, and the list of places it protects, is still growing.