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2026 Land Conservation Conference
March 4 – 6, 2026
I Hotel and Conference Center Champaign

We’re excited to host our 2026 Land Conservation Conference in the vibrant university community of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, as we continue to move around the Prairie State to serve those who save land, protect water resources, and connect and uplift communities.
On Wednesday, this year’s agenda includes an expanded Conservation Land Trust Day. On Thursday, March 5, enjoy our Keynote opener, Year In Review report, choice of afternoon field trips, followed by dinner at the hotel.
Take a look at our full agenda below, and the details on the many programs we’re offering.

Agenda Land Trust Day Programs
warbler ridge conservation area, grand prairie friends
New this year!

A Cultural Exchange

We’re excited to announce a special PSCC Cultural Exchange opportunity at this year’s Land Conservation Conference. This exchange is voluntary, but we encourage all attendees to participate.


How the Cultural Exchange works: Each participant attending is invited to bring a cultural exchange item that holds personal significance, represents your organization, or reflects upon your heritage or culture. Please remember to bring an item that is meaningful to you and be prepared to share its story and give it to a new friend.



Upon arrival, place your item onto the designated PSCC Cultural Exchange table which should be located in the main conference area. Sign your first and last name on one of the paper slips provided, fold it in half and then place this into the drawing bowl that will be located at the cultural exchange table.
At designated times throughout the conference, a name will be randomly selected from the drawing bowl. The person selected will then be asked to briefly present about their Cultural Exchange gift and its significance, then they in turn will draw a name from the bowl to determine who receives their item as a gift. The Cultural Exchange event offers a unique way to learn about each other’s heritage and build meaningful connections, as well as offer the opportunity to share a piece of your personal history and to gain insights into the lives and traditions of fellow attendees.

Choose one of these Deep Dive Workshops to kick off Land Trust Day on Wednesday

Indigenous knowledge for land managers

Best practices in land co-management with tribal partners

In this panel-based workshop, hear from cultural preservation staff from three Tribal Nations that trace their ancestry to what is now Northern Illinois on reconnecting their people with areas in their ancestral footprint.

Presented by:

Kim Vigue (Oneida/Menominee), Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum

Samantha Skenandore (Ho-Chunk/Oneida), Skenandore Wilson LLP

Bill Quackenbush, Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin

Raphael Wahwassuck, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation

Charles Harris, Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma

Steve Barg and Hillary Holt, Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation

Red Alerts and Red Herrings

Strategies to Prevent Flare-Ups from Becoming Full-Blown Dumpster Fires

Everything is running smoothly at your land trust when suddenly a crisis hits – how do you respond? Bold Bison will share tools and skills to assess the situation and boost your ability to communicate with confidence during a crisis.

Presented by:

Brandon Hayes and Patrick Williams, Bold Bison Communications & Consulting

Cultivating Relationships

Sharing Community-centered Conservation Successes and Challenges

Learn about the successes and challenges of building new relationships and strengthening partnerships that benefit communities and nature through collaboration, listening/learning, and sharing power and resources.

Presented by:

Alison Paul, The Conservation Foundation

Choose one of these field trips available to you Thursday afternoon:

Food For Thought

A Model to Feed Communities through Conservation

Experience a model nonprofit organization at the intersection of conservation, sustainable farming, community food assistance and education! Sola Gratia Farm serves a mission across East-Central Illinois to make healthy food accessible for all by nurturing productive land and cultivating diverse, inclusive communities.

Located for more than 30 years in Urbana, the realization that need was greater than they could provide at their size & scale, led the organization to recently embark on a massive (successful!) capital campaign to add acres, sustainable infrastructure and services.

Walk the farm with Sola Gratia staff and partners, including The Savanna Institute. Tour the edible windbreaks, the packing plant, the greenhouse, and imagine how partnerships in your community can “harvest” these results.

Outdoors and indoors, dress for conditions. Approximately 1 mile walk.

VIP Tour of Science in the Making

Meet the Scientists

For the first time in nearly four decades, a team of Illinois scientists reassessed and released an updated endangered and threatened status list of plants in the state (Aug 2025).

Meet the team as they narrate the outcomes from their two-year journey across Illinois. Participant groups will then cycle through the eDNA and Medical Entomology lab where scientists will share discoveries in mosquito/tick pathogens and Bat eDNA. The tour also includes visits to the UIUC Herbarium and Bird collections.

A Bird In The Hand…

Is Worth 100 Years of Science Discoveries

Join UIUC Natural Areas Coordinator and Botanist James Ellis for a field experience steeped in history and scientific research. Walk through two ancient 60-acre forests, Trelease and Brownfield Woods, that are both remnants of the Big Grove, an island of trees in the Grand Prairie that once covered about 15 square miles in present-day Champaign County. Visit Phillips Research Area, where we’ll find a highly acclaimed bird banding station.

Hidden among the acres, we will encounter a series of stations including ornithologists mist-netting birds, mammalogists demonstrating tracking technologies and foresters involved with the global ForestGEO program, ready to share their research from the field. Outdoors, dress for conditions. Approximately 3-mile walk.

Bonus Trip Friday afternoon:

Walk the Path of the Bison

Partnerships in Prairie at Buffalo Trace

The Buffalo Trace Prairie project began a quarter century ago with a community grassroots desire to restore a few acres of native prairie along a popular new asphalt bike path at Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve in Champaign County. The partnership between a land-holding government agency with limited ecological restoration experience and capacity and an eager local land trust, Grand Prairie Friends, has resulted in a long-lasting and constantly expanding story of restoration success.