The Landscape Conservation Bulletin |
|
A bi-monthly service of the Network for
Landscape Conservation
|
|
|
Dear Network Friends,
September. Here in Massachusetts time feels compressed: summer still reverberates but each day it seems a bit further removed; cooler weather beckons, the oranges and flame reds of our maples are more vibrant by the day.
I attune to this seasonal rhythm of New England, but I know so many of you attune to other rhythms: the yellowing of aspens may be the marker of note for those in the Northern Rockies, or, in the southern states, you may still be looking a month or two out for the return of cooler weather.
Part of the power of the Network for Landscape Conservation is this ability to stitch connections across geographies—to be able to harvest and share the inspirations and innovations that are emerging everywhere. This month, we check in on California to amplify exciting work that colleagues there are pushing forward around articulating the essential role of collaborative capacity for accelerating landscape-level outcomes, and how we can better center justice, equity, and cultural responsiveness within our work.
As we all strive to advance the practice of collaborating across boundaries and jurisdictions to conserve, steward, and restore the landscapes that are so meaningful to us, this learning is so essential. This month we’ve visited California, but we know work that needs to be highlighted and learned from is bubbling up in all corners of the country. We invite you to reach out to share what is emerging in your landscape so that we can continually stand upon one another’s shoulders in reaching for those outcomes that weave together people and place to build a better future for our landscapes and communities.
Enjoy this Bulletin, and wishing you all the very best through the coming of Fall!
|
|
Collaborative Capacity Framework |
Additional Landscape Conservation News |
Landscape Conservation Job Board |
Webinars & Additional Resources |
|
Jonathan Peterson
Program Manager
Network for Landscape Conservation
|
|
Cover photo: Fall arriving at North Lake in the Sierra Nevada. Credit: Photo by Ross Stone on Unsplash.
|
|
Featured News
New white paper explores collaborative capacity and how increasing such capacity can accelerate conservation, restoration, and stewardship outcomes
|
|
We work at a landscape scale because the scale of the challenges facing the people and places we care about demands it. Challenges like the climate and biodiversity crises and the legacies of environmental injustice—these transcend boundaries and jurisdictions, and exceed the capacity of any single organization to address effectively on their own. So we know that in our responses we too must transcend boundaries and jurisdictions, and bring together a breadth of partners to work together in defining our future relationship to the places in which we live. At the heart of our work then is the need to collaborate effectively. But what is needed to ensure the collaboration is effective?
The California Landscape Stewardship Network has just released a new white paper that explores the capacities that are needed to collaborate effectively and offers recommendations for increasing collaborative capacity to achieve conservation, restoration, and stewardship outcomes. While the recommendations are considered primarily through the lens of California, they are broadly applicable and moreover, the white paper provides a framework for thinking about collaborative capacity needs that is relevant across geographies. In a moment where unprecedented levels of federal funding will be emerging in the coming years to advance project implementation in landscapes across the country, it is increasingly clear that well-functioning, enduring collaboratives are essential for maximizing impact of these investments. This white paper offers an important step forward in better describing how the building of effective collaborative capacity translates in to effective and inspiring project and program delivery.
|
|
Featured News
Mycellium Map offers pathways to explore in centering justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our landscape conservation work
|
|
If landscape conservation is about bringing people together to co-create a shared vision for the future of the place they call home, it is clear that to be truly effective and enduring it must focus on equity, justice, and authentic community relationships. In this way, landscape conservation is part of a broader shift in the conservation movement, as we increasingly reckon with historical underpinnings of racist and exclusionary practices. The 2021 report, Weaving the Strands Together, highlights this: “The politics of race, power, and wealth have been used to exclude Indigenous, Black, and Brown Americans from equally shaping and benefitting from myriad environmental values, and it is time to address and reconcile these injustices and to recalibrate the land conservation movement as one for all people.” As we recognize this, many of us wrestle with questions of, What can we do? Where do we start?
Now, the California Landscape Stewardship Network’s Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Roundtable for Healing Severed Connections has released a new resource that it is calling the Mycellium Map, to serve as a guide to undertaking equity work within the conservation and stewardship field.
Mycelium is a fungal structure that forms threads and branches which grow in complexity and serve to connect, strengthen, and share resources across an ecosystem. Borrowing this ecological metaphor, the Mycellium Map is intended to provide the user with a web of pathways to explore, to consider/reconsider, and to act on centering justice, equity, and cultural responsiveness in the context of landscape conservation and stewardship. Like any map, it does not prescribe a direction or a linear series of steps towards a destination, but rather offers a number of entry points and approaches to this complex and iterative work. In presenting a series of interconnected nodules around which to orient your thinking and reflection, the Mycellium Map is an invitation to start where you are, to follow a path, to turn around and go back to the beginning, to recommit, to go deeper.
Pair your exploration of the Mycellium Map with this reflection on Healing Severed Connections—offered by José González who co-chairs the JEDI Roundtable for the CSLN—which calls us to recognize that we exist in community with the world around us and pushes us to embrace the complexity and intersectionality of this interconnectedness in our work.
|
|
Additional Landscape Conservation News |
|
In a warming climate, we need to radically rethink how we conserve nature—Cover story from National Geographic’s September “America the Beautiful” issue focuses attention on shifting conservation from parks and refuges to thinking about entire landscapes.
The Hewlett Foundation interviews Hester Dillon, highlighting her report released early this year, “Unfencing the Future: Voices on How Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People and Organizations Can Work Together Toward Environmental and Conservation Goals.”
New U.S. Geological Survey report—“A Sagebrush Conservation Design Framework to Proactively Restore America’s Sagebrush Biome”—identifies healthy and degraded sagebrush areas, where and how it’s being lost, and lay out a path to slow the loss.
The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition publishes a collaborative land management plan for the Bears Ears National Monument.
Article in Land Lines, the quarterly magazine of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, highlights how important wise land use and thoughtful stewardship will be to meeting fundamental ecological and human needs in the face of an increasingly disrupted climate.
The Center for Large Landscape Conservation releases a toolkit detailing how land trusts can contribute to highway infrastructure projects for wildlife.
The National Religious Partnership for the Environment releases a new report, "Stories on the Land: Showcasing Black History on Public Lands."
The Conservation Finance Network and the Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform release a new “playbook” for accelerating environmentally-focused impact investing the Great Lakes region.
The Western Governors Association releases a new report on Working Lands, Working Communities Initiative, highlighting recommendations on issues that affect natural resource management and the role that local communities play in successful land planning and management processes.
Life in the Land: New film series explores perspectives from across Montana that provide global inspiration for healthy relationships between people and the land, through collaboration and leadership from local communities.
The Staying Connected Initiative and the Wildlands Network collaborate to release a fact sheet highlighting reoccurring funding opportunities for improving landscape connectivity in the Northeast.
New England Climate Smart Forest Partnership Project receives $30 million in funding to launch a pilot program to help forest landowners implement climate-smart forest practices that also protect ecosystem health and biodiversity.
Article in Orion Magazine highlights longleaf pine restoration efforts in the Southern United States, and the colonial history that has impacted this landscape.
Article in Civil Eats highlights how the S’Kallam Tribe in the Pacific Northwest is investing in the future of food sovereignty through ecosystem restoration and efforts to bring back the camas plant.
Storymap highlights the Human-Predator Coexistence Project, which is bringing together a team of scientists and storytellers to explore the complex relationships between humans and animal predators across the world.
New Hampshire Public Radio story highlights the launch of the Family Forest Carbon Program, a new program that will use carbon credits to incentive small landowners in making their forests more resilient to climate change.
Article in the Arizona Republic highlights how Tribes—holders of the first and most senior rights—are reclaiming their water rights, and are increasingly recognized as full and equal partners in the ongoing and future management of the Colorado River.
Wildlands Network releases a new report identifying the highest priority sites for enhancing the ability of wildlife to safely cross highways across North Carolina.
Assisted migration: NPR story highlights how foresters are taking active steps to introduce species from warmer locations as a means to preserve landscapes in the face of changing climate.
Article in A.T. Journeys, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s magazine, highlights the Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership's efforts to broaden and diversify the range of voices providing input on the A.T. landscape.
|
|
Upcoming Conferences & Events
* * *
Denver, Colorado
Note: will include both an in-person and virtual option. There are still a few scholarships available for those who need some financial assistance. Please contact catieboehmer@colostate.edu for questions
A virtual event
Minneapolis, MN
Baltimore, MD
Denver, CO
Hybrid with virtual option as well
A virtual event
Spokane, WA
Call for papers: the J.B. and Maurice C Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium at The George Washington University Law School (to be held April 6-7, 2023) seeks papers to inform dialogue at the Symposium around its theme of improving our nation’s environmental and natural resource laws to reach the Biden administration’s America the Beautiful 30x30 goal.
|
|
Landscape Conservation Job Board
* * *
Collaboration Program Manager, New Mexico Forest & Watershed Restoration Institute
Deputy Director, New Mexico Forest & Watershed Restoration Institute
Indigenous Stewardship Coordinator, Climate Science Alliance
Coastal Resiliency Senior Manager, Partnership for the Delaware Estuary
Wind River Conservation Organizer, Greater Yellowstone Coalition
Outreach and Campaigns Associate, Center for Western Priorities
Indian Country Fellowship, Western Leaders Network
Executive Director, Cold Hollow to Canada
National Policy Campaigns Associate, The Wilderness Society
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.
|
|
Webinars & Additional Resources
* * *
October 3, 2022
A Wildlands Network webinar
October 4, 2022
An NLC Landscape Conservation in Action webinar
October 5, 2022
An NPS Connected Conservation webinar
October 12, 2022
Collaboration with Native Nations and Tribal Consultation
A training from the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution
October 18-19, 2022
A University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law webinar
October 20, 2022
A Training Resources for the Environmental Community webinar
November 10, 2022
An NPS Connected Conservation webinar
November 10, 2022
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, P.O. Box 1587, Bozeman, MT 59771
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
