Scaling Up: Large Landscape Conservation Action Through Locally Led Planning & Partnerships

The National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance (RTCA) supports locally led strategic conservation action to protect and restore large natural landscapes through collaboration, joint action, and shared investments.  RTCA staff works nationwide to build capacity for conservation at urban, suburban and rural interfaces, from the community to the regional scale.  This poster will present strategies and best practices in community-based conservation work garnered from this experience, highlighted through a selection of case studies that demonstrate partnerships and roles, building consensus on conservation goals, methods to assess and prioritize lands for conservation and implementation tools.

As a program, RTCA advances the protection and stewardship of large natural landscapes, including parks, open spaces, and working lands, through partnerships such as the Saginaw Bay Greenways Collaborative in Michigan, the Intertwine Alliance in Oregon and Washington, and the Cacapon and Lost River Valley Trust in West Virginia.  Currently, technical assistance is being provided on 34 projects across the country to facilitate conservation planning and implementation with a focus on building successful partnerships, engaging communities and stakeholders, and promoting a long term commitment to large landscape conservation.

These community-based landscape conservation partnerships often have multiple objectives including ecological, economic, historical, cultural, and recreational goals.  Typical RTCA Scaling Up projects might include wildlife habitat connectivity planning, such as continuous wildlife corridors; regional and statewide strategic conservation planning; protection and restoration of natural lands and waters; recreation planning across networks of public lands; and implementation of local projects that further large landscape conservation goals.