Live Green: Eastern Shore Land Conservancy

OXFORD, Md – The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy is one of Maryland’s leading trusts and program open space has played a significant role in protecting land in the state.

Oxford Conservation Park is owned by Talbot county through Program Open Space. President and CEO, Steve Kline of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy told me they help maintain the park while also protecting more than 65,000 acres on more than 325 easements across six counties. So what is Program Open Space?

“What happens is the county identifies this as a place that they want to buy and they bring some money to the table and program open space is that state funding that closes the gap to allow the county to purchase this. So it remains in county hands and it will also remain as open space for as long as forever essentially.” Kline explained.

“ESLC is the conservation partner here along with Natural Lands Project, the friends of the Oxford Conservation Park and the community here to maintain the park, the county maintains it. The one limiting factor to so much wildlife abundances are access to habitat. So this is a pretty key place for that.” Kline said.

This 80 acre park was once agricultural fields, and is now a safe haven for a variety of wildlife. This includes migrating birds such as the bob white quail, whose populations have declined over the years. As program open space currently faces funding cuts, these bird populations and natural landscapes our communities depend on may be at risk.

“The population decline of quail has certainly been because of habitat loss. This last legislative session, back in early 2025, did cut program open space funding by $25 million over four years. So, $100 million in cuts in total. ESLC fought those cuts. It’s a very difficult budget time in Annapolis right now.” Kline urged.

He continued, “They cut it because they were looking for all the money they could. They’ve made big investments in other things like education, and as those bills come due, we’ve seen other programs across state government get cut and program open space was just one of them. I will say that program open space, the funding that paid for this park in large part was cut much deeper than other programs in the environmental space.”

If people are not aware of these funding cuts, these parks and open spaces may become something else.

“I think we are confident that what we don’t protect at some point will be developed. It might not be five or ten years from now, but 50 or 100 years from now. We think if we don’t have it protected forever, it’ll become something else. As we see programs like program open space cut and de-prioritized, we have to speak out and say, no, this is important.” Kline explained.

The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy doesn’t only work with program open space. They also do private conservation easements for landowners who want to preserve nature.

“They essentially sell back to Eastern Shore land Conservancy, their development rights, and they get a conservation easement program, open space funds, many of those conservation easements as well.” He explained, “It takes private landowners and public lands to make a fabric of conservation across the landscape.”

The conservancy currently has several unfinished projects through program open space with hopes to continue if there are no funding cuts. They have a newsletter for anyone who would like to show their support on their website.