I had the honor of work­ing with some great folks on the very first acqui­si­tion by For­ever Wild which was a gift of bald eagle habi­tat at Lake Gun­tersville State Park. It was fit­ting that the first acqui­si­tion was a dona­tion because it set the tone for the future of the pro­gram. For­ever Wild has been a model for con­ser­va­tion because it has max­i­mized its resources to the fullest extent pos­si­ble by lever­ag­ing the money as match for fed­eral dol­lars and through public-private partnerships. 

I believe the great­est thing about For­ever Wild is that it gives pri­vate landown­ers more options for their land.… they can sell their land while simul­ta­ne­ously insur­ing that the land they love will be pre­served. They can make a gift of the land for the tax incen­tives, or they can choose to keep it and not sell for con­ser­va­tion pur­poses because For­ever Wild only works with will­ing sellers.

When a pro­gram like For­ever Wild has been around for so long, many peo­ple take for granted the places it has helped pro­tect. But I recall what it was like before For­ever Wild, when there was no fund­ing to pre­serve the places that mat­ter to us as Alabami­ans and when we watched mil­lions in fed­eral fund­ing go to other states because we had no local match.  Turkey Creek, the Walls of Jeri­cho, and the tens of thou­sands of acres of pub­lic hunt­ing land  would not be avail­able for the pub­lic to enjoy with­out For­ever Wild. And you can believe that I don’t want to go back to the old days before For­ever Wild, because there wasn’t  much enjoy­ment in watch­ing Alabama lag fur­ther and fur­ther behind our South­east­ern coun­ter­parts when it came to land con­ser­va­tion.  It was even less fun to watch as our spe­cial places were being lost for­ever, even when the landown­ers were will­ing to pre­serve them, sim­ply because we had no money to buy them.   

With For­ever Wild buy­ing land for almost twenty years,  Alabama still ranks dead last in the South­east when it comes to pub­lic con­ser­va­tion lands.… but For­ever Wild gives us hope.… hope that one day we won’t be last and hope that many more of the places that mat­ter will remain for­ever wild.

Wendy Jack­son