The Future of Landscape Conservation: Cultivating Landowner Engagement

A VIRTUAL POLICY FORUM
Dear Network Friends,
The Network for Landscape Conservation is pleased to be convening a virtual policy forum on Thursday, December 17th, to focus on private landowner perspectives and innovations for landscape conservation. This is the second in a series of virtual policy forums that we are hosting, building on our inaugural forum (recording available here) this summer.

Cultivating Landowner Engagement: Successful landscape conservation depends upon the ability to work across multiple organizations and land ownerships to manage for shared conservation values. Private landowners are a key class of ownerships. Working farms, ranches, and forests are often the last best places for intact, fertile, habitable open land. They can provide interconnected permeable landscapes where nature and local communities thrive. They are the cornerstones of both human communities and the ecosystems we all depend on – and in some regions, they are disappearing. Too often, landowner contributions to conservation at landscape scales are overlooked, while some collaboratives struggle with how to better engage private landowners. Lastly, with the ever-changing economic, sociopolitical, and environmental pressures, innovations in public policy are needed to bridge gaps and embrace private landowner participation.


Thursday, December 17, 2020 at 1:00 – 2:30 pm ET

Keynote Address
Lesli Allison, Executive Director of the Western Landowners Alliance, will offer an opening address on landowner perspectives on working with partnerships to meet conservation objectives as large scales.
Panel Discussion
Jimmy Bullock – Senior Vice President of Forest Sustainability, Resource Management Service LLC
Adam Kiel – Iowa Soybean Association and Senior Vice President, AgOutcomes, Inc.
Jim Lyons – Vice President of Landscape Conservation for Defenders of Wildlife, past Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment
Sara Parker Pauley – Director of the Missouri Department of Conservation, and President of the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies


The panel will be moderated by Lynn Scarlett, the Chief External Affairs Officer at The Nature Conservancy.
FORUM OBJECTIVES:
  • Explore non-partisan, expert perspectives on the substantial role of private lands in collaborative landscape-scale conservation;
  • Discuss policies and approaches to better engage private landowners in landscape conservation activities;
  • Highlight needed innovations in public policy to build and sustain landowner engagement;
  • Gather ideas to be included in a public policy paper on landscape conservation;
  • Build on the landscape conservation policy work of the Network and its members, including the 2017 National Forum on Landscape Conservation and its associated report, Pathways Forward: Progress and Priorities in Landscape Conservation.
On behalf of the Network's Policy Forum Committee, we look forward to having you join us for this important conversation. Thank you.
Julie Regan
Network Co-Chair
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency
Shawn Johnson
Network Co-Chair
Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at The University of Montana


STAY CONNECTED
The Network for Landscape Conservation is the community of practice for practitioners advancing collaborative, cross-boundary conservation as an essential approach to protect nature, culture, and community.


Contact Ernest Cook , Interim Network Director, for more information. 


The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation.
‌