On June 7, 2025, a quiet but revolutionary shift in law and land took place in Colorado. A Mountain in the San Luis Valley became the first mountain in the United States to legally own itself. Through Sacred Contract’s Land That Owns Itself program, the mountain now holds its own deed, protected from future development or extraction.

The project is part of a growing global movement to rethink humanity’s relationship with nature. While Rights of Nature laws have gained traction worldwide, the recent project represents a new frontier: ecosystems themselves holding legal title to the land they comprise.

One of the legal architects behind this groundbreaking work is Thomas Linzey, Senior Legal Counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (CDER) and a founding member of Sacred Contract, a partnership between CDER, Regenerative Earth, and the Center for Ethical Land Transition. Linzey drafted the world’s first Rights of Nature law in Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, in 2006, and later consulted with Ecuador’s constitutional convention to help write Rights of Nature into the country’s 2008 constitution. His decades of work have reshaped how communities and governments think about law, property, and the natural world.

We spoke with Linzey about how the concept of land that owns itself came to be, what makes this project unique, and the potential future of this legal experiment.

Bioneers: Thomas, could you provide some background on how the concept of Land That Owns Itself evolved, and how it led to the recent project?

Thomas Linzey: We’ve been involved in Rights of Nature work for a long time. Back in 2006, we drafted the first Rights of Nature law and later worked with Ecuador’s constitutional convention to embed it into their national constitution. Over the years, the work has evolved. About ten years ago, we began experimenting with conservation easements. In places where local governments weren’t willing to pass Rights of Nature laws, we helped landowners incorporate legal rights of ecosystems into their deeds. That way, the land title itself would recognize Rights of Nature, not just the law.

But some landowners pushed us further. They asked: Even if the deed recognizes Rights of Nature, isn’t the land still owned by humans? What if nature could actually own itself? At first, we thought it was impossible. Western law is fundamentally built on the idea that nature is property. That system is so ingrained that people rarely question it.

Still, we took the challenge seriously and spent about a year researching how to create a legal structure that treated ecosystems not as property but as their own titleholders. Out of that came the Land That Owns Itself concept — ecosystems legally holding title to the land they comprise.

In 2023, we tested the idea in Washington State with a two-acre forest parcel. That project succeeded, and if you look in the county deed book, you’ll see the forest itself listed as holding its own deed.

The recent project in Colorado builds on that proof of concept. It represents the first full expression of the project; not only does the land own itself, but it is also guided by Indigenous and local guardians in a majority-led Indigenous council. That makes it a more complete model of how this approach can work in practice, with a majority of the guardians having an ancestral relationship to the Land through their indigenous lineage.

Bioneers: Do you see this concept of Land That Owns Itself as the future of Rights of Nature?

Linzey: Yes. I believe this model has even greater potential than the original Rights of Nature work. For me, it’s also personal. Over the last 30 years, I’ve heard many landowners say, I don’t see myself as the owner, I see myself as a steward. That’s a beautiful sentiment, but in reality, the law says you own that land. You hold legal control. And when you die, it often ends up in the hands of someone who doesn’t share your values. Sometimes it goes to the state and is sold to the highest bidder, and then exploited.

So while it’s nice to think of ourselves as stewards, the legal system doesn’t recognize that. It still positions people as dominant and nature as property. Until we change that fundamental property relationship, the problems remain.

That’s why this model matters. It doesn’t just change how people think, it gives them a legal alternative. If you believe you’re a steward, this makes it real: The land owns itself, and you step into a genuine role as guardian or trustee. It replaces myth with legal reality.

It also expands more quickly than traditional lawmaking. Individual landowners can adopt it for their parcels, and municipalities could even create transition funds to help shift land into this structure. We’re already hearing from landowners with thousands of acres and from older people without heirs who want to protect their land this way.

When it comes to Indigenous sovereignty, the implications are profound. Think about Land Back. Colonizers took Native land and imposed a Western property system — titles, deeds, lines on maps. Today, when land is returned, it often comes back through that same colonized system. It’s essentially saying: We broke it, but we’ll give it back to you on the condition that you accept it in the legal form that we imposed on it.

Land That Owns Itself offers a different path. Many of our clients are tribal governments and Indigenous communities. For them, this model can feel more aligned with their philosophies because it decolonizes the property framework. The land isn’t “owned” in the Western sense. Instead, ecosystems hold title, and Indigenous communities step into guardianship roles. That gives them real decision-making authority without requiring ownership — a concept historically foreign to many Indigenous traditions.

We fully support Land Back as it exists today. It’s far better than the status quo. But we see Land That Owns Itself as a more philosophically consistent way of decolonizing property, restoring sovereignty, and recognizing nature’s inherent rights.

Bioneers: So how does this work in practice, and how will it be sustained over the long term?

Linzey: When the entity is created to hold the deed, it’s the ecosystems themselves — the flora, fauna, climate, and water — joining together to create that legal entity. The ecosystems themselves are the legal members of the entity, with humans then serving as their voices or guardians.

Those guardians sign a legal document that spells out their duties and obligations. When the Indigenous-led guardianship council signed that document for the “mountain that owns itself”  in Colorado three months ago, they agreed to very specific responsibilities: recognizing the Rights of Nature, acting in the best interests of the ecosystems, and avoiding any action that would infringe on those rights.

To add another safeguard, we placed an easement on the land before the transfer. That easement sets additional limits on what the guardians can do, so even if they stray from their responsibilities in generations ahead, the land remains protected.

Looking ahead, new guardians will need to step in over time, and an endowment is essential to sustain the work. The vision isn’t just to freeze the land as it is today, but to restore it to a healthier state. Some past activities disrupted the mountain’s ecological balance, and broader restoration projects are still needed, from rewilding to repairing ecological damage.

That’s why Sacred Contract is currently working on a $5 million fundraising campaign to establish a permanent endowment. The fund will support the guardians in their stewardship and ensure that resources are always available for the restoration and long-term care of the land.

Bioneers: Looking to the future, how do you see this concept growing?

Linzey: What excites me is how this model can extend beyond the land parcel, which changes ownership. If a river has recognized rights within one property, in theory, we can enforce those rights upstream against owners outside the original deed. We call that extra-jurisdictional enforcement. It’s a way for small parcels to exert much larger influence over state permits, fracking operations, factory farms — anything that affects the ecosystems tied to that land.

The bigger challenge is cultural. In this country, property ownership is so deeply ingrained that few people even question the concept. For this work to take hold, the critique of property along with the alternative vision we’re building has to grow alongside these projects.

That said, the future is already taking shape. In Colorado, we have two additional parcels near the mountain that we hope to fold into the same structure. The broader vision is what we call “nodes.” The first node is the San Luis Valley, where the “mountain that owns itself” sits at the northeastern edge. The long-term idea is a patchwork of land across the valley, so instead of just a mountain that owns itself, you have a valley that owns itself.

Beyond Colorado, interest is spreading. We’ve been approached by landowners in New York, Vermont, Costa Rica, and the UK. In England, lawyers are already working to replicate the model, and we’re funding a feasibility study there with three pilot projects — one of them over a thousand acres.

The goal is to establish the concept here, then adapt and scale it in other regions. In that sense, the “mountain that owns itself”  is not the endpoint, but rather the beginning of something much larger.