Delivering Conservation through Partnerships in the Great Northern Landscape

Twenty-first Century conservation requires well-functioning partnerships if any success will be realized.  Because the primary agents of ecological change (e.g., climate change, exotic species invasions, energy production and transportation) are now accurately recognized as ‘landscape-scale problems’ the conservation community is responding by transcending traditional, jurisdiction-based conservation planning and action by taking a broader, integrative approach to address those changes.  The Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GNLCC) is embracing well-vetted conservation frameworks (conservation measures standards, strategic habitat conservation, ecological integrity) and developing a scalable, participatory, dynamic, technology-supported approach applying planning to delivery.  GNLCC’s 5-yr Science Plan (http://greatnorthernlcc.org/sites/default/files/documents/gnlcc_scienceplan_version14_6-5-14.pdf) aligns vision and goals with standard conservation approach and vocabularies and employs a fine/coarse filter approach to address those goals. The fine filters – 29 Conservation Targets prioritized in our Conservation Framework (http://greatnorthernlcc.org/sites/default/files/documents/gnlcc_framework_final_small.pdf) – are linked to measures of ecological integrity through a spatially-explicit Landscape Integrity Index. The Plan also charts appropriate roles for each of the working groups (Steering Committee, Advisory Team, Science Community, Partner Forums, etc.) identified in the Governance Charter. GNLCC-funded science and technology tools are in place to support communication and analysis.  In practice, the Cascadia Partner Forum is convening to define population and habitat objectives, prioritize threats, and identify key limiting factors for grizzly bear/forests and salmon/streams in a transboundary subregion of the GNLCC.   This pilot informs management agency partners to coordinated action aimed at objective achievement.