Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape Update - Spring 2023

Conservation Discovery Website Application

A new resource is now available for landowners and land managers in the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape. This interactive web tool is based on parcel data much like your local county government’s GIS website. Your property can be located one of three ways: searching for your name, searching for your property’s address, or zooming into your parcel and selecting it. Once on your parcel, you will have the option to select from several conservation interests and sub interests. Then you can generate a custom downloadable and printable report for your property with conservation options and descriptions as well as contact information for professionals who are ready to help you meet your goals. You can access this through a link on our website at https://conservationlawcenter.org/sentinel or directly at https://www.sisl.org/. 

Military Compatibility Legislation Signed into Law

Indiana Senate Bill 322 was signed into law by Governor Holcomb on April 20, 2023. This legislation allows local governmental units to establish military impact zoning districts around three military installations: NSA Crane, Lake Glendora Test Facility, and Grissom Air Reserve Base. The legislation also requires that leases or real estate sales disclosure forms for properties within these zones state that the properties are in military impact zoning districts. The Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape supported this legislation and is looking forward to the additional awareness this will help create about maintaining compatible land uses around NSA Crane and Lake Glendora Test Facility to support these critical national defense facilities and local economic drivers. More information can be found in the following link: https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2023/bills/senate/332

First Meeting of the Full Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape Coordinating Committee Held in Nashville

The committee of partners that will help guide the success of the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape met for the first time in Nashville on May 11. Twelve organizations make up the committee and include our Department of Defense installations, State and Federal natural resources agencies, representatives from the agricultural community, and private non-profit conservation organizations. The membership is engaged and ready to perform more conservation collaboratively than could have been accomplished individually, all while protecting military training and readiness in southern Indiana. The guest keynote speaker was Bruce Beard, Associate Director of the Natural Resources Institute at Texas A&M University and contractor with the Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration program. Bruce was instrumental in establishing the REPI program and helped create the Sentinel Landscape Partnership Program. We are grateful for the advice, assistance, and advocacy Bruce has given our landscape at the federal level. Over the next six months, our strategic planning committee will be meeting to draft an updated strategic plan to guide the landscape.