The Landscape Conservation Bulletin |
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A bi-monthly service of the Network for
Landscape Conservation
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Dear Network Friends,
This is an exciting time for landscape conservation, with a growing recognition of the contribution that conservation and stewardship at scale can make to saving endangered species, protecting working lands, preventing floods, mitigating global warming, promoting environmental justice, and providing many other benefits. Indeed, in this month’s Perspectives piece we expand on how the decades-long trend toward landscape-level thinking is emerging in this moment with recognition of how necessary the landscape perspective is for guiding our conservation and stewardship efforts in the 21st Century.
Earlier this month I had the privilege of attending the “Conservation in Action Summit” hosted by the Biden/Harris administration (you can view the recording here as well). It was a day of celebration, highlighting the tremendous accomplishments of the last two years. And it was a day of looking ahead, with the administration announcing new actions and initiatives that will continue to accelerate our landscape conservation and stewardship efforts in the coming years.
I came away from the Summit with renewed energy and inspiration. The work that we all—individually within our own landscapes and collectively within this community that is the Network for Landscape Conservation—are committed to will shape the future of the places and communities that we love and cherish. The landscape perspective that drives our work is increasingly being called upon in the search for pathways forward in the face of the intensifying impacts of the biodiversity, climate, and environmental injustice crises.
So it is with gratitude for the contributions you each are making, and with anticipation for all of the work and success to come, that we write today and share our March Bulletin. As we move into Spring, we hope you too are finding renewed energy and inspiration!
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2023 Catalyst Fund RFP Released |
Funding for Collaboratives and Networks |
Collaborative Leadership Trainings |
Perspectives: The Landscape Perspective Emerges |
Additional Landscape Conservation News |
Landscape Conservation Job Board |
Webinars & Additional Resources |
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Ernest Cook
Director, Network for Landscape Conservation
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Cover photo: A marker of springtime throughout the landscapes of the Northern hardwood forests: A maple shack in Quebec boils sap into syrup. Photo by Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash.
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Featured News
The 2023 Catalyst Fund RFP is out, with proposals due by April 21
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Earlier this month, we released a new Request for Proposals for the 2023 funding round of the Catalyst Fund. With this its five grant cycle, the Catalyst Fund strives to accelerate the pace and practice of landscape conservation and stewardship across the United States by making strategic investments in strengthening the collaborative capacity of place-based, community-grounded Landscape Conservation Partnerships. The Fund couples financial support through a competitive grant program with capacity-building support through in-depth Peer Learning for funded Partnerships. A portion of the Fund is reserved specifically to advance Indigenous landscape conservation and stewardship priorities.
Visit the Catalyst Fund page of our website for more information on the how to apply. Proposal submissions are due by Friday, April 21 and we anticipate announcing grant awards by August 2023.
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Featured News
The “what”, “why”, and “how” of funding for partnerships, collaboratives, and networks
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As the landscape conservation and stewardship movement matures, its only become clearer that landscape partnerships and collaboratives are essential to creating inclusive, locally-led conservation and stewardship successes that are large—and connected—enough to realize ecological and social impact that will move the needle on the biodiversity, climate, and environmental injustice crises. A fundamental challenge that continually arises though is how to resource these collaboratives so that they can accelerate impact at scale beyond the bounds of any single individual organization.
- Why fund networks
- How to understand network funding needs
- How to fundraise for a network
- How to manage donor funding
- How to best approach network funding
- How to provide funding to networks
- How to monitor and measure success
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Featured News
Opportunities to develop collaborative leadership knowledge and skills
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Funding is a core challenge for partnerships, collaboratives, and networks, but it is also becoming more widely understood that working collaboratively requires differing mindset, knowledges, and skills than what most of us have been called upon to develop and employ in our conservation work to date. A series of upcoming programs are offering opportunities to explore, cultivate, and strengthen collaborative leadership skills:
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Fundamentals of Western Conservation Leadership: Through the Looking Glass—over the course of eight months participants will explore and practice adaptive, pragmatic skills and behaviors that better enable them to resolve conflict and help disparate groups and individuals identify common interests, in service of addressing the complex wildlife management, natural resource, and landscape-scale challenges of the West. Applications are due May 12, 2023.
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The Collaboration Certificate Course, from the Environmental Dispute Resolution Program at the University of Utah—offered as a 7-session online course intended to explore the “art and science” of collaborative problem-solving through lectures, case studies, peer-to-peer sharing, discussion, and simulation exercises. Applications are due April 30, 2023.
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The Collaboration Program in Natural Resources, from the Ruckelshaus Institute at the University of Wyoming—through a 10-month training program that includes six in-depth sessions and a practicum project that applies collaborative expertise to a real-world situation, participants will explore collaborative leadership skills; designing, convening, and facilitating collaborative problem-solving processes; and participating effectively in collaborative problem solving processes. Rolling applications for a July 2023 start.
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Perspectives: Landscape Conservation in Action |
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In this month's Perspectives piece, we pause to survey the lay of the land, reflecting on where the collaborative landscape conservation and stewardship movement stands. This is indeed an exciting moment: a decades-long trend towards collaborative landscape-scale thinking is breaking through, with much from the last two years suggesting that the landscape perspective is now widely recognized as a unifying framework through which we must consider conservation and stewardship efforts to have any hope of facing down 21st Century challenges.
The deep connection that people feel to the landscape in which they live, work, or visit—and their hopes and desires for its future—has given rise to a network of landscape collaboratives throughout the country. As we reflect on and celebrate this moment where the collaborative landscape perspective is increasingly viewed as a key organizing principle for advancing conservation and stewardship action, we also reflect on what needs persist. What we have observed is that effective landscape collaboration that works authentically with diverse interests is difficult, and requires a dedicated investment of effort and energy over time. A crucial unmet need continues to be funding support not just for project implementation but also for the coordination and collaborative processes that allow projects to be conceived, developed, and then eventually delivered.
We encourage you to read the Perspectives piece and continue to share your reflections and insights as we all collectively work to envision the future direction and work of collaborative landscape conservation and stewardship.
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Additional Landscape Conservation News |
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Writing in the most recent Parks Stewardship Forum, participants explore how the recently completed Blueprint for a Resilient Cascadia—a collaborative strategy for supporting large-landscape resilience in the transboundary region of Washington and British Columbia—fostered a transformational shift from “Indigenous engagement” toward “centering Indigenous leadership” within the Cascadia Partner Forum.
The California Landscape Stewardship Network has released a new independent case study of its Cutting Green Tape Initiative, which suggests the Initiative is sparking a paradigm shift for environmental restoration work in California—with streamlined regulatory and permitting processes allowing for an increase in the pace and scale of multi-benefit environmental restoration work across the state.
Native Americans in Philanthropy, in partnership with the Biodiversity Funders Group and 15 leading biodiversity and climate funders, launched the Tribal Nations Conservation Pledge to support Tribal biodiversity and climate conservation efforts—with more than $100 million over the next five years pledged to date.
Earlier this month the Sentinel Landscapes Federal Coordinating Committee announced the designation of the South Carolina Lowlands Sentinel Landscape—and released the Sentinel Landscapes 2022 accomplishments, which demonstrates that since 2013 Sentinel Landscapes have permanently protected nearly 610,000 acres of land and enrolled over 3.1 million acres of land in voluntary conservation programs.
Opinion piece in Environmental Health News considers how people’s identities and lived experiences shape their relationships with land—and argues that we cannot continue to view public lands as “neutral,” but must instead grapple with their colonial and racist roots.
A recent episode of the A Matter of Degrees podcast explores how the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy is utilizing co-management approaches on the Tongass National Forest to enable the Forest Service to partner with Tribal governments, Alaska Native corporations, and community-based organizations to support the economic, cultural, and natural resources sustainability of the region.
In February the U.S. Forest Service released an action plan outlining steps the agency will take to advance tribal consultation and strengthen Nation-to-Nation relationships with federally recognized Tribes.
Earlier this month the Department of the Interior released a Restoration and
Resilience Framework to restore lands and waters and build climate resilience through locally-led, partner-driven landscape efforts.
A blogpost from the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategy Group reflects on what it takes to build capacity in rural and Native Nations communities.
The Community Conservation Research Network has launched a new website designed to serve as a repository of knowledge, tools, and resources on how local communities can engage in conservation and stewardship in support of sustainable livelihoods.
In the face of the intersecting challenges of climate change, affordable housing shortages, loss of biodiversity, and racial injustice, a new working paper from Lincoln Institute of Land Policy explores pathways to collaboration between community land trusts focused on using land for affordable housing and conservation land trusts focused on using land for ecological, open space, scenic, agricultural, and/or recreational purposes.
Article in The Revelator highlights how researchers are working to understand how the ecosystems of the Klamath River are functioning currently, as a baseline ahead of the historic river restoration efforts—including removal of four dams—that will play out over the next 18 months.
The Colorado College State of the Rockies project releases its 2023 Conservation in the West survey results.
An article in Anthropocene Magazine highlights a new study that explores the under-appreciated ways in which animals are also part of the carbon equation—with estimates suggesting that restoring populations of otters, wolves, fish and other ecosystem-shaping creatures could capture 6.4 billion tons of CO2 annually.
Article in The Revelator outlines how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is driving investments in habitat connectivity efforts.
A group of road ecology and habitat connectivity experts have outlined the need to elevate climate change considerations into wildlife crossing planning.
A new toolkit from the Center for Large Landscape Conservation details how land trusts can contribute to highway infrastructure projects for wildlife, harvesting and sharing lessons learned and best practices for land trusts interested in wildlife crossing structure projects.
Article in Land Lines Magazine highlights how the Coastal Barrier Resources System has been an effective tool for informing land use decisions and benefiting climate adaptation—and how highlights a proposed expansion of the system.
A new report from the New England Forestry Foundation suggests that shifts in management practice would enable Maine’s commercial forests to store 20% more carbon without reducing harvest yields.
Rewilding our minds: In an interview with Emergence Magazine, poet David Hinton argues that the ecological crisis is rooted in our assumptions that nature is everything other than us, that the wild is everything other than us—and that we won't be able to confront the crisis until we overcome this radical separation and embrace kinship and relationship with the world around us.
An article in The Revelator highlights the importance of urban “microrewilding”—underscoring its value to sustaining biodiversity and to restoring the human relationship to nature.
Article in The Narwhal highlights how the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation of southwestern Vancouver Island is taking stewardship of its lands back into its own hands and pushing for a conservation rather than extractive economy.
Last month, the Respect Great Bend Coalition released a multimedia Storymap capturing the cultural and natural significance of the Great Bend of the Gila landscape in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.
Opinion piece in the New Haven Register highlights how forest conservation and management pathways in New England can respond to the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
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Upcoming Conferences & Events
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The 2023 J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium
Washington, DC
A virtual event
New York, New York
Anchorage, Alaska
Fort Collins, Colorado
New Haven, Connecticut (and hybrid with virtual option)
Boulder, Colorado (and hybrid with virtual option)
New Haven, Connecticut
Applications accepted through February 14, 2023.
Boulder, Colorado
Austin, Texas
St. Louis, Missouri
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Landscape Conservation Job Board
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Coordinator, Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts
Associate Director, Conservation Finance Network
Multiple positions, New England Forestry Foundation
NEFF is seeking new team members to define and implement a groundbreaking and nationally relevant pilot program in New England to build a climate-smart, forest-based economy as a powerful tool for climate action.
Conservation Diversity Fellowship, Open Space Institute
Conservation Finance Fellow, Conservation Finance Network
Director of Conservation Partnerships, Northern Rockies, Prairies, and Pacific Region, National Wildlife Federation
Director of Landscape Connectivity, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Senior Specialist for Landscape Connectivity, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Senior Director of Marketing & Communications, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Yukon Territory Conservation Specialist, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Eastern Slopes Landscape Protection Coordinator, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Highway Connectivity Project Coordinator, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
This section of the Landscape Conservation Bulletin is intended to be a space to share job postings that will be specifically relevant to landscape conservation practitioners. We welcome submissions: if your organization would like to widely distribute a posting please be in touch.
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Webinars & Additional Resources
An NPS Connected Conservation webinar
April 4, 2023
A Wallace Stegner Center Green Bag webinar
April 6, 2023
An New England Wilderness Trust Spring Speakers Series webinar
April 25, 2023
April 26, 2023
April 26, 2023
Understanding Conflict and Planning for Successful Collaboration
A training offered by the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution at the Udall Foundation
May 3-4, 2023
An NLC Landscape Conservation in Action webinar
May 24, 2023
Following cancellation of the 2020 Conservation Finance Boot Camp, the Conservation Finance Network compiled a 4-part video short course, which is available via the above link.
A weekly podcast that explores the challenges presented by adapting to climate change and the approaches the field's best minds believe are already working.
A podcast that explores the intersection of social and environmental advocacy, and seeks to uncover the actions people are taking around the world to showcase the symbiotic, yet sometimes tumultuous, relationship between people and nature.
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The Network for Landscape Conservation is the community of practice for practitioners advancing collaborative, cross-boundary conservation as an essential approach to protect nature, culture, and community in the 21st Century.
Contact Ernest Cook, Network Director, for more information.
Contributions of news, upcoming events, resources, and job postings for future Bulletins are welcomed. We also welcome inquires for potential future "Perspectives: Landscapes Conservation in Action" stories; please be in touch if you are interested in sharing stories and insights from your work.
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The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, P.O. Box 1587, Bozeman, MT 59771
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