Every four years the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress gathers conservation leaders to advance conservation thinking and strategies. This September the Congress, themed as "Planet at a Crossroads," was held for the first time in the United States, with more than 10,000 conservationists from at least 193 countries convening in Honolulu. Conservation at the landscape scale was implicit or explicit in virtually every presentation or workshop, and the Practitioners' Network co-hosted a large landscape conservation reception with the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Nature Needs Half, Wildlands Network, and the Wild Foundation that connected practitioners across continents for information exchange and inspiration. While it is impossible to report on all that was showcased, the following may be of particular interest to large landscape conservation practitioners: 

Access more information - including video content and selected recordings of sessions and presentations - at the IUCN World Conservation Congress website . 

Earlier this month transboundary conservation practitioners from across the globe convened in Glacier National Park for Hands Across Borders: An International Workshop for Transboundary Conservation. The focused three-day conversation emphasized the exchange of information, the building of relationships and connections across geography, and the building of capacity within the field of practice to enable and sustain transboundary conservation initiatives. The workshop built upon the newly released IUCN report, Transboundary Conservation: A Systematic and Integrated Approach. Workshop presentations (and a forthcoming final report) can be viewed here.

Increasingly, cross-boundary collaboration and heightened strategic thinking at scale are being identified as necessary to conserve biodiversity and ecological processes over the long term. This is highlighted in two recent publications:

• In an article in BioScience, a prominent group of agency scientists and conservation leaders call for a cohesive and coordinated national approach to habitat preservation in the United States: "The future of habitat and biodiversity conservation will rely on an unprecedented level of cooperation across private, local, state, tribal and federal agency boundaries." Read a news synopsis here and access the paper's abstract. 

• The North American Intergovernmental Committee on Cooperation for Wilderness and Protected Area Conservation (NAWPA) has released a new report, Land Conservation in North America: An Analysis of Land-based Conservation in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The result of collaboration between protected areas agencies in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, the report assesses the extent of lands that are protected for conservation throughout North America, and positions NAWPA as an institution to coordinate work on shared issues at a transboundary scale.

Globescapes, an interactive map, launched to showcase large landscape conservation efforts across globe

More information here.

More information here.

S tudy draws on literature to document the potential of "landscape approaches" for improving land conservation and management

Read news synopsis here and access full article here.

More information here.

October 7, 2016 -- Scaling Up: New Strategies for Landscape-Scale Conservation

October 13-14, 2016 -- The 7th Annual Conference of the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent

Fernie, BC - more information

October 28-30, 2016 -- The Land Trust Alliance Rally

November 15-18, 2016 -- PastForward: A Conference of the National Trust for Historical Preservation

November 16, 2016 -- The Regional Conservation Partnership Network Gathering: Using the Power of Teamwork to Advance Regional (Big, Innovative, Connected) Conservation

April 2-7, 2017 -- 19th George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas and Cultural Sites

The Practitioners' Network for Large Landscape Conservation is an alliance of professionals and citizens working to support and advance the field of conservation at the landscape scale.

Contact Emily Bateson, Network Coordinator, for more information.