South Atlantic Conservation Blueprint 1.0: Closing the loop between planning and action

The South Atlantic region, which includes more than 89 million acres of land and water from Southeast Virginia to Northern Florida, typifies the rapid natural and cultural change happening in the American South. Climate change, urban growth, and increasing human demands on resources are reshaping the landscape and impacting the people, communities and economies that depend on them. While these forces cut across political and jurisdictional boundaries, the conservation community does not have a consistent cross-boundary, cross-organization plan for how to respond. A broad community of individuals and organizations are working together within the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative to create a shared Conservation Blueprint depicting the places and actions needed to sustain the region’s natural environment and cultural heritage in the face of future change. Version 1.0 of this Conservation Blueprint, which prioritized conservation actions (e.g., land/water protection, livelihood/economic incentives, land/water management) at a subwatershed (HUC12) scale, is now complete (http://www.southatlanticlcc.org/page/conservation-blueprint). More than 300 people from 85 different organizations were actively involved in developing this initial version of the Blueprint. We will discuss how version 1.0 was developed, how it is being used now in a diversity of conservation decisions, and the approach to create version 2.0 by June 2015.