KEENE VALLEY — The Nature Conservancy in New York is making a grant to the Adirondack Land Trust to provide $498,000 in funding to increase ALT’s capacity and scope of operations.

ALT is separating from TNC’s Adirondack Chapter after more than 25 years. During that time they have shared an office and worked closely on land conservation projects, with the Conservancy providing staffing services to ALT.

Mike Carr, formerly head of both organizations, is leaving TNC to exclusively lead ALT, now that TNC has completed a decade of managing and selling 161,000 acres it bought from the former Finch, Pruyn paper company. Some staff are expected to go with Carr to ALT, and he plans to hire more and establish an independent office. The TNC funding announced this week will strengthen those efforts.

  TNC is focusing its land protection work around broad strategies to fortify previous accomplishments and bolster climate resiliency. It cited its recent purchase of 753 acres with 2 miles of wild Moose River in the southwestern Adirondacks to show how it uses large-scale climate-resiliency science to determine where to invest in land protection.

Keeping waterways connected is also one of TNC’s priorities. In the past several years, it and partners have reconnected 90 miles of river habitat by replacing or retrofitting seven culverts in New York’s Lake Champlain Basin with fish-friendly designs. By the end of this summer, the Conservancy will have field inventory data for road-stream crossings for all of the major Adirondack watersheds feeding directly into Lake Champlain.