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Annual Meeting
Washington, DC
February 11-12, 2019
Washington, DC
March 12-14, 2019
Philadelphia, PA
April 4-6, 2019
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Shenandoah Valley National Battlefield Historic District
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley saw no fewer than 325 clashes during the Civil War as both sides battled to control this strategic north-south corridor. But more recently, the valley has been the scene of another kind of conflict, pitting preservation against economic development.
In 1992, the National Park Service studied Civil War sites in eight Shenandoah Valley counties and identified fifteen battles of national importance. The study also found that most were threatened by encroaching residential and commercial development. The sheer number of Civil War sites and the scale of the landscape created a daunting preservation challenge.
The idea of multiple national parks under federal management was rejected by valley residents as too intrusive and by the National Park Service as too expensive. In 1996, Congress designated eight counties in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia as a National Heritage Area - the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District - which preserves and interprets the region's significant Civil War battlefields and related historic sites.
This management strategy created a locally-driven vehicle for preserving the valley's historical character, protecting battlefields, and increasing public awareness, and the National Park Service was enabled to provide critical planning and interpretation expertise in a non-intrusive way.
Today this effort is led by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, which works with partners to preserve the hallowed ground of the Valley's Civil War battlefields, to share its Civil War story with the nation, and to encourage tourism and travel to the Valley's Civil War sites.
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Living Landscape Observer
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The Presidio San Fransisco Credit: Recreation.gov
Forward Together: The
Culture/Nature Journey
On November 13-14, 2018 US ICOMOS welcomed experts from 15 countries across six continents to a symposium at the Presidio in San Francisco. Titled
Forward Together: Effective Conservation in a Changing World
, the gathering had as its primary goal the sharing of ideas on how to integrate culture and nature in order to support long-lasting, equitable conservation. Building on earlier international nature/culture journeys, participants hit the ground running in hopes of taking immediate action.
Read more on the Symposium here
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The Coordinating Committee of the Network for Landscape Conservation gathers for a picture on Boneyard Beach, Bull Island in the Cape Romaine National Wildlife Reserve in South Carolina. The field trip kicked off an April retreat in Charleston where attendees finalized a
report: Path Ways Forward: Progress and Priorities in Landscape Conservation.
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2018: The Year-in-Review
We also interviewed three leaders in conservation and preservation,
Emily M. Bateson,
coordinator for the Network for Landscape Conservation, Don Hellman, the former Assistant Director for Legislative and Congressional Affairs at the National Park Service, and John Sprinkle, historian and author of the recently published Saving Spaces: Historical Land Conservation in the United States.
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Second Century Perspectives, a publication of the National Park System Advisory Board
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In Case You Missed It:
Requiem for an Advisory Board
Last January, nine of the eleven members of the National Park System Advisory Board resigned in protest. Almost one year later, the board has now been re-constituted with new membership, and will meet again in the near future according to a recent article in the
Washington Post. For background on resignations and on the board itself, we invite you to re-visit an article written by Rolf Diamant earlier this year,
"Requiem for an Advisory Board."
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Princeville NC Credit: David Saville Wikipedia Commons
News Updates
A new feature of the always innovative
Cultural Landscape Foundation website highlights cultural landscapes in the United States that are key to "remembering, contextualizing and interpreting" our national struggles for both civil and human rights. Many of these landscapes are threatened by development, lack of funding, and climate change. For example,
Princeville in North Carolina was the first town incorporated by African Americans in the United States. Many residents trace their roots to Freedom Hill where the Emancipation Proclamation was read aloud to their newly freed ancestors. However, today the town is threatened by the rising waters of climate change.
The Coalition to Protect America's National Parks recently send a
letter to the incoming director of the National Park Service asking for more guidance to employees on managing friends groups and other partnerships. This has become a critical issue as some park service staff have been investigated and disciplined for ethics violations when carrying out partnership programs. Effective landscape scale work requires flexible collaborative management as an essential component. Hats off to the Coalition for calling out this issue and helping make landscape work possible inside and outside the walls of government.
In 2016, UNESCO's World Heritage Centre and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published the report
World Heritage in the High Seas: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
which explores modalities on how the World Heritage Convention could apply to areas of the open ocean that lie outside any nation's jurisdiction. The meeting will attempt to outline how the convention can used to protect marine areas such as the Costa Rica Thermal Dome and the White Shark Café (Pacific Ocean), the Sargasso Sea and the Lost City Hydrothermal Field (Atlantic Ocean), and the Atlantis Bank (Indian Ocean).
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About Us
The Living Landscape Observer is a website, blog and monthly e-newsletter that offers commentary and information on the emerging field of large landscape conservation. This approach emphasizes the preservation of a "sense of place" and blends ingredients of land conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development. Learn more about how you can get involved or sign up for the newsletter here. |
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