Heart of the Rockies Initiative: Building landscape-scale success from local, community-grounded conservation

Heart of the Rockies Initiative is a partnership of 24 land trusts and conservancies organized to increase the pace of voluntary conservation of the most biologically, agriculturally and culturally important private lands in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and southern British Columbia and Alberta. Firmly grounded in local communities, our partnership envisions an ecologically connected and functional landscape where wide-ranging wildlife have freedom to roam and local ways of life and economies are valued and sustained. We achieve our landscape vision by providing a collaborative structure that brings stakeholders together to deliver science-based conservation planning and to collaboratively build conservation capacity and capital funding.

Heart of the Rockies Initiative facilitates large landscape conservation by delivering the latest climate adaptation, connectivity, and landscape integrity science to on-the-ground private land conservation practitioners.  Heart of the Rockies works with agency and independent scientists to identify emerging data and make it available to land trusts and conservancies at scales needed for conservation action.

Private land conservation plays a significant role in this large, public land dominated landscape. Private lands are the essential pieces that bind the greater landscape together and control connectivity in the landscape, including movements of organisms between protected areas. Private lands tend to be in the productive lowlands, where the best soils and abundant water support diverse resource values.

The poster highlights our collective accomplishments in conservation planning, capacity building, and capital fundraising and demonstrates that our efforts enhance enduring landscape conservation in America’s wild Rockies.