Managing for Landscape Scale Outcomes in the Essex National Heritage Area

The emerging landscape scale movement needs to be both a conservation and historic preservation strategy that works across jurisdictional boundaries with the private and public sector and with cultural and natural resource partners.  National Heritage Areas offer a great laboratory to explore the effectiveness of these long-term regional approaches. This presentation on the Essex National Heritage Area in Essex County, Massachusetts provides an overview of this collaborative approach. This presentation focuses on many of the common elements of heritage area practice including creating a regional vision or story, the benefits of linking cultural and natural values, and creating the necessary resilient partnership network. It will draw upon a 2010 evaluation by the Center for Park Management that focused on the heritage areas organizational and programmatic accomplishments and the relationship to the area’s management organizational plan over a twelve-year period. Outcomes included increased awareness and stewardship of heritage resources, more intra-regional partnership projects ranging from interpretive initiatives to trail development, high quality collaborative educational programing, identifying significant heritage regional resources, and building community capacity for their conservation. It will also report on the importance of the relationship with Salem Maritime National Historic Site as public lands partner.  The heritage area has been able to undertake initiatives from helping fund a sailing vessel, creating a youth job corps, and expanding the park unit’s programing across a large region.  The evaluation process has demonstrated the importance of a community-based planning process and significance of partnership networks in delivering successful outcomes over time.