Training for large, landscape-scale conservation: where are the gaps and how can we address them?

Landscape conservation bridges many disciplines and many tools. Conservation professionals communicate with stakeholders representing the full range of society. As a result, landscape-scale conservation requires skills that are less urgent at smaller scales:

● cross-training in natural and social sciences and law to facilitate work in interdisciplinary groups,

● training in conservation opportunities on working lands and urban areas, as well as on protected lands,

● decision analysis to support transparent comparison of costs and benefits of multiple action alternatives,

● program management to organize complex, interdependent processes and encourage contingency planning,

● team management to facilitate work with large groups of stakeholders with varied backgrounds, and

● communications skills in multiple media and for a range of audiences.

Cross-training in natural and social sciences and law is already standard in professional environmental master’s programs, but other skills are less consistently taught. Advisors and instructors can highlight the need for skills in these other areas and can bring representatives of landscape-scale conservation programs into the classroom remotely or in person. Landscape-scale programs can improve their field of potential hires by bringing students onboard. Many master’s programs offer or require service-learning classes that team groups of student with clients for a semester or a year. These hands-on, client-driven projects provide students with a deep and mature understanding of the real world that is almost impossible to match in the classroom. Such projects  provide partner organizations an opportunity simultaneously to benefit from and influence the next generation of conservationists.