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Printed first, the result: no land-trust holding in Lincoln Township was found; the county's trust geography is real, dated, and seated entirely outside the township. The holder is the Shirley Heinze Land Trust, and its founding is told as a founding because the register asks for one: Dr. Shirley Heinze, an Ogden Dunes scientist who died in 1978 at 51, had fought to preserve the Indiana Dunes; in 1981 Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Seidner endowed an organization in her memory — the Shirley Heinze Environmental Fund, now the Shirley Heinze Land Trust. Its own current totals conflict by carrier and print unmerged: approximately 4,000 acres protected on its home page (2026), 3,600 acres in its 2025 press materials, 4,186 acres in the Land Trust Alliance's directory — across Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph, Marshall, and Starke counties. Its St. Joseph County course is the Lydick Bog story: the trust's first project outside its three home counties — purchase of the original 176 acres (the DNR preserve sheet gives 176.46 acres) of one of Indiana's last sphagnum bogs, west of South Bend; a state-dedicated nature preserve; then, about 2024, 93 added acres bought by the Indiana DNR as a conservation easement with Next Level Conservation Trust money, county American Rescue Plan money, and Community Foundation support; and in May–June 2026 a ribbon-cutting for the expansion — an additional mile of trail, a second parking lot on Pine Road, and a link trail to the Indiana Dinosaur Museum's paths. The ACRES-class test runs the other way: ACRES Land Trust, founded 2 March 1960 at Fort Wayne, holds its preserves in northeast Indiana, southern Michigan, and northwest Ohio; no ACRES preserve in St. Joseph County appears in its preserve list or the DNR's county preserve list, and none is claimed. The DNR's nature-preserve list for St. Joseph County is itself the cleanest frame: four preserves — Bendix Woods, Chamberlain Lake, Lydick Bog, Spicer Lake — not one in Lincoln Township. Closure: DUG — the holder test is answered whole: holder in the county, none in the township, both at register strength.
Sources: Shirley Heinze Land Trust, heinzetrust.org (founding 1981; ~4,000 acres, 2026) and Land Trust Alliance directory (4,186 acres); Northwest Indiana Business Magazine, Dec/Jan 2020 (Seidner endowment; Heinze, d. 1978); Indiana DNR, Lydick Bog Nature Preserve sheet (176.46 acres; ownership Shirley Heinze Land Trust) and nature-preserve list by county; Heinze Trust, May 2026 expansion story, and Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, 3 June 2026 (93 acres; added mile of trail); ACRES Land Trust preserve listings (northeast Indiana service area).