Landscape Conservation Design: Conserving Sustainable Landscapes by Design

Conserving sustainable landscapes for wildlife and people is the most significant challenge facing society in the 21^st century; one that will require a fundamental shift in thinking and action, addressing both social and ecological systems. Landscape conservation design (LCD) is a process (to design) and a product (a design) that achieves stakeholders’ missions, mandates, and goals while ensuring sustainability of ecosystem services for current and future generations of Americans. It is an integrated, collaborative, and holistic process that is grounded in the interdisciplinary science of landscape ecology, the mission-oriented science of conservation biology, and the human-centric art of design. The process results in a science-based, technologically-advanced, spatially-explicit product that identifies those things of interest/need to landscape stakeholders; articulates quantifiable objectives for those resources; assesses current and projected landscape patterns and processes; and identifies a desired future condition, conservation & development trade-offs, and delivery strategies. LCD involves intentional human changes to landscape patterns to sustainably provide ecosystem services that meet societal needs and respect societal values. This presentation will explore the "why" and the "what" of landscape conservation design. We will explore historical and current policy developments that support the current evolution from single-agency/single-sector site-specific planning to a multi-partner/multi-sector landscape-scale design approach, and outline a preliminary framework for implementing such.