The Land Connection
May/June 2020
The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT) protects land where you live, work and play.
We protect land that supports healthy habitats where wildlife thrives and people can connect with nature.
Every communication channel available is dominated by the coronavirus and Covid-19, every day, all hours. It’s overwhelming. In a time when people are trying to adjust to a new reality, new schedules, new ways of living daily life, one element around us is constant and can provide some solace or refuge. The environment – green spaces, woodlands, creeks meandering along their floodplains, even your garden – all are still there.
These green places can provide respite and a few moments away from the uncertainty of current life. The Georgia Piedmont Land Trust (GPLT), a land conservation organization based in Gwinnett County, for 22 years has focused entirely on permanent protection of green places in ours and other communities in northern Georgia. We believe that a clean, healthy, protected environment is the underpinning of a strong community, a place where people choose to live.

Never has that truth resonated more strongly. Without belaboring the idea with weighty justification, any effort to transition from the most stringent restrictions designed to protect people should recognize that getting outdoors to exercise appropriately and to simply enjoy nature is desirable. This is no challenge to published protocols. This is a call to recognize the most beneficial surroundings and positive activities available to us. 

Take a walk on a woodland path or alongside a stream close to home; you can leave behind the anxiety of current events for even a little while. These are places where time slows; that are just now displaying the beauty of a new growing season, where the sounds and sights are grounded in the continuity of season change and new things growing.
Bird watching even outside your own home or in a nearby greenspace provides an alternative focus, as well as an opportunity to learn the calls and habits of the birds in your area. Working in your garden or even just spending some idle time there is unexpectedly welcome and refreshing.
Never before have we needed a call to go smell the roses and other happy scents as much as today – or to check out the sights and sounds of birds and other wildlife making their nests and raising their young. A hike through the forest can certainly be accomplished with appropriate social distancing, while providing the opportunity to immerse yourself in the solitude of the woods.

Take a fresh look around and immerse yourself in the green spaces available to you. It is one of the most positive activities you can safely undertake today.
Our land conservation benefits you and future generations of Georgians. Help us continue this important work by donating today.
How can I support GPLT?
Protecting important lands is what we do. But we cannot do it without you. Please support our mission with a donation today.
Pictures taken at GPLT protected properties.
Top: Rabbit.
Bottom: Prairie Warbler.
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Photos Courtesy of Hank Ohme, Carol Hassell & Dale Higdon