Caring for Your Land

What is Stewardship?

When referring to land, stewardship is the careful and responsible management of the forests, farmland, waters, and wildlife habitat under your care. Whether it’s a backyard pond or a forest behind your house, stewardship involves a thoughtful, ongoing series of actions that protect and improve the health of the land.

Stewardship is about working with the land while ensuring that the features you value most are conserved for generations to come. This might look like planting native trees, removing invasive plants, monitoring for pests or diseases, restoring stream banks, or creating a pollinator garden. Stewardship is about taking care of the land outside just as you would care for your home inside. Stewardship is something that every landowner, farmer, and community member can practice, no matter the size of their property.

Why is Stewardship Important?
The land around us is always changing. The change can be slow, over decades and centuries, though sometimes it is rapid due to storms, development, or disease. Weather, wildlife, vegetation, and human activity constantly shape the landscape. Without intentional care, even the most beautiful or protected land can face serious problems such as erosion, invasive species, pollution, and the loss of native plants and animals.

Stewardship helps prevent these issues by maintaining the health and resilience of the land. By actively caring for the land’s natural resources, landowners can support biodiversity, protect clean water, and ensure the land remains productive and beautiful over time. Stewardship also creates a deeper connection between people and the places they love, turning landownership into a long-term meaningful relationship rooted in care and responsibility.

Why Many Properties Benefit from Active Management
In Pennsylvania and New York, stewardship is especially important due to the region’s environmental history and unique challenges. Our forests, wetlands, farmland, and waterways face increasing pressure from invasive species, development, and a changing climate.

In fact, by the early 20th century, nearly all of Pennsylvania and New York’s forests had been heavily clearcut. Although there are areas that have since regrown naturally, the effects are still felt today. Forests often lack diversity, struggle to regenerate due to overabundant deer populations, and are vulnerable to invasive species filling in spaces once occupied by native ones.

Active management can help restore ecological balance and improve the health and function of these landscapes. Whether you’re caring for 0.1 acre or 100 acres, your stewardship efforts directly contribute to the long-term health, value, and beauty of the land and water around us.

Caring for land benefits everyone – your family, your neighbors, your community, and especially the generations who will walk the same ground in the future.