Greenbelt Land Trust of Mid Missouri

06/03/2026

Day One of this year’s annual meeting activities is a wrap, with field trips to Greenbelt Land Trust’s Birch Cove Farm Conservation Easement, Chinkapin Bluff Conservation Easement, and Hinkson Valley Nature Preserve, followed by an evening reception at along the mighty Missouri River. Thanks to all who participated, and thanks to the landowners and the community who made this all possible. Looking forward to getting down to business with Day Two of the MLTC annual meeting tomorrow!

04/18/2026

With yesterday’s severe thunderstorms having ended before dawn, today turned out to be perfect for a volunteer workday removing invasive species from Greenbelt’s Hinkson Valley Nature Preserve. Thanks to a great group of about two dozen Mizzou student volunteers from 812 Ministries organized through the MU Office of Service-Learning as part of its Caring for Columbia initiative, we removed some garlic mustard and an absolutely heroic amount of bush honeysuckle from this popular and well-utilized nature preserve that forms a key link in the city of Columbia’s extensive trail system. Many thanks to all who contributed to this effort!

04/01/2026

Unfortunately, we're going to have to cancel our "A Toast to the Land" event at Greenbelt Land Trust's Hundred Acre Woods Nature Preserve this Saturday, April 4th.

With all the rain we've been getting, and with even more predicted to come, it may well be raining on Saturday, and even if it isn't, our lovely daffodil patches -- which have already taken some frost damage from the recent hard freeze -- will undoubtedly be a muddy mess this weekend. In addition to making for a miserable, uncomfortable experience for visitors, holding a gathering in these conditions would have an adverse effect on the land by causing undue soil disturbance. So, with disappointment, we've made the decision to cancel.

This is, regrettably, the risk that we run when trying to plan an outdoor event in early spring!

So if you were planning to come, or even if you were thinking about joining us but hadn't made a final decision yet, we appreciate your interest and we'll miss you, but we'll try again next year, and we hope to see you then!

03/04/2026

Did you know there are hundreds of varieties of daffodils growing at Hundred Acre Woods Nature Preserve? Greenbelt Land Trust invites you to experience them.

🌼🍷 A Toast to the Land 🍷🌼

Join us Saturday, April 4th for a relaxed spring afternoon among the blooms. Sip wine, stroll through the nature preserve, and enjoy the daffodils with friends who care about conserving the places that make mid-Missouri special.

🕐 1–4 PM | Come & go as you please

🎤 2 PM | A brief talk on the history and stewardship of the property

💛 $20 suggested donation

🥂 Bring your own glass & lawn chair

📍 2 miles east of Highway 63 on Pinnacles Road

Come see something unexpected, and raise a glass to the land and to the community that has permanently protected it!

02/25/2026

We’re so excited to have been selected to partner with Land Trust Alliance and Columbia Sportswear on this wonderful grant program, and we’re so grateful for being able to benefit from the generosity and commitment to conservation of so many people across the country!

Y'all really are some Tough Mother Funders! 🤩🤩🤩

We are completely blown away be the success of the Columbia Sportswear Retail Store Grant program. From Oct. 2025-Jan. 2026, shoppers made donations at the register, totaling a mind-blowing $358,600! These funds will be divided between 30 land trusts, who will receive small grants in the amount of $12,365.

Every land trust is as unique as the communities it serves. Congratulations to the following land trusts who worked hard to promote this pilot program and are making positive impacts on land, water, wildlife and their communities every day:

Aiken Land Conservancy
Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust (CCALT)
Columbia Land Trust
Conservation Florida
Friends of the Columbia Gorge
Great Peninsula Conservancy
Greenbelt Land Trust of Mid Missouri
Hill Country Conservancy
Historic Virginia Land Conservancy
Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation
Kennebec Estuary Land Trust
Kentucky Natural Lands Trust
Lancaster Farmland Trust
Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plain
Minnesota Land Trust
Native Prairies Association of Texas
Nebraska Land Trust
Payette Land Trust
Restoring Lands: A Wisconsin Land Trust
Ridge and Valley Conservancy
RiverLink
San Diego Habitat Conservancy
San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust
South Alabama Land Trust
South Jersey Land & Water Trust
SELT - Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire
Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy
Summit Land Conservancy
TennGreen Land Conservancy

Together with Columbia, our partner land trusts and the incredible donors across the country, we've proven that conservation never goes out of style.

02/10/2026

Not quite sure what season this is — winter? false spring? random unpredictable weirdness? — but one thing’s for sure: Greenbelt is hard at work as usual on the stewardship of our conservation properties. In this case, it’s a prescribed burn at our Hundred Acre Woods Nature Preserve in northern Boone County. Many thanks to our dedicated expert volunteers for making this necessary work happen!

(Sound on!)

12/31/2025

Happy New Year’s Eve! On this final day of the 2025 .gives campaign, here is the final stop on our monthlong west-to-east tour of Greenbelt’s conservation work.

Today we’re focusing on the next-to-easternmost property in Greenbelt’s portfolio of protected lands (the easternmost one being the Pasley Farm Conservation Easement, which we featured earlier this month to celebrate the closing on that most recent easement on December 11th). The property we’re focusing on today is the one protected by the Birch Cove Farm Conservation Easement, consisting of roughly 85 acres in central Callaway County. Most of the property consists of pastureland, which is used primarily for the raising of sheep. The Birch Cove Farm Conservation Easement protects open space, agricultural soils, and woodlands which buffer Stinson Creek, an important waterway in the area. Much of the land had previously been used – and abused – for strip mining, and the conversion of the land to environmentally-sensitive, sustainable sheep farming and breeding, including the use of rotational grazing practices and the planting of native grasses for natural grazing, has restored the health and productivity of the land and improved its hydrology along a key waterway.

If you would like to help Greenbelt continue its work of fostering the restoration and conservation of distinctive landscapes such as the land protected by the Birch Cove Farm Conservation Easement, please donate to Greenbelt through .gives before the end of the day today by visiting CoMoGives.com/greenbeltlandtrust. Thanks!

12/30/2025

On this next-to-last day of the 2025 .gives campaign, we come to the next-to-last stop on our monthlong west-to-east tour of Greenbelt’s conservation work.

Today’s tour stop is the 144-acre property at the western edge of Callaway County that is protected by the Chinkapin Bluff Conservation Easement. This property, located within the bounds of the Cedar Creek District of the Mark Twain National Forest, features approximately 1.75 miles of frontage along Cedar Creek, which forms the boundary between Callaway and Boone Counties. About ¾ of the property is wooded. Other portions of the property consist of grassland, some of which has been restored with native prairie grasses; a large pond/wetland complex; and a black walnut orchard that is managed for nut production as well as for potential timber harvesting purposes. The walnut farming (and potential timber harvesting) aspect of the property is consistent with Greenbelt’s goal, under the Working Lands Initiative, of conserving farmland for sustainable agricultural production by current as well as future generations of farmers. Meanwhile, the woodlands that occupy most of the property serve as a scenic amenity to the surrounding area, provide high-quality habitat for endangered Indiana bat populations, and function as a critical riparian buffer for Cedar Creek. There are also some visible karst geology features, including limestone bluffs above Cedar Creek. The conservation easement placed on the property provides substantial protection against two potential threats: conversion to industrial-scale rowcrop agriculture, which is prevalent in the surrounding area; and subdivision for large-lot residential development, which has already been done on nearby properties due to the land’s scenic value and its proximity to the rapidly growing city of Columbia.

If you would like to help Greenbelt continue to conserve distinctive landscapes such as the land protected by the Chinkapin Bluff Conservation Easement, please donate to Greenbelt through .gives before the end of the day on December 31st by visiting CoMoGives.com/greenbeltlandtrust. Thanks!

12/29/2025

Today is the third-to-last day of this year’s .gives campaign, so it’s also the third-to-last day of our monthlong west-to-east tour of Greenbelt’s conservation activities.

Today’s tour stop takes us down into the Ozarks for a unique property protected by our Sauer-Ozark Fen Conservation Easement. As the name implies, this 39-acre property in southwestern Maries County, between Dixon and Iberia, MO, encompasses a fen complex in the southeastern corner of the site. This relatively rare and significant feature provides habitat for a wide variety of flora and fauna, many of which are not found on any of Greenbelt’s other protected sites. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the property consists of forest and woodland habitat, while a significant portion of the remainder consists of open grassland areas, much of which the landowners are actively working to restore to native prairie conditions. In addition, a tributary of Atwell Creek runs through the property, buffered by steep stream banks that are heavily forested.

If you would like to help Greenbelt continue to conserve distinctive landscapes such as the land protected by the Sauer-Ozark Fen Conservation Easement, please donate to Greenbelt through .gives by visiting CoMoGives.com/greenbeltlandtrust. Thanks!

12/28/2025

Four days to go in this year’s .gives campaign, and four more stops on our west-to-east tour of Greenbelt’s conservation work! Today we’re looking at our Mystic Forest & Farm Conservation Easement, which covers a parcel of land that is just about evenly split between 14 acres of agricultural land on the relatively flat ridgetop in the eastern and northern parts of the site and 16 acres of woodland on the site’s southern and western sides that slope down toward Fowler Creek.

The placement of a conservation easement on Mystic Forest & Farm protects this land – both its wild, natural elements as well as its sustainable agricultural uses – from development pressures such as the constant threat of large-lot residential construction in the immediate vicinity. With the easement in place, the land will be able to continue supporting a vibrant local food system through the production of a wide variety of healthy produce such as peppers, cucumbers, and apples; the preparation of fermented foods such as sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles; and the raising of mealworms for high-protein food, animal feed, and fertilizer. Greenbelt, meanwhile, welcomed this easement donation not only because of the inherent conservation values of the land but also because the easement was consistent with the goal, established under Greenbelt’s Working Lands Initiative, of conserving farmland for sustainable agricultural production by current as well as future generations of farmers.

If you would like to help Greenbelt continue conserving both wild and working lands such as the 30 acres protected by the Mystic Forest & Farm Conservation Easement, please donate to Greenbelt through .gives by visiting CoMoGives.com/greenbeltlandtrust. Thanks!