Our team has been back in our respective homes across the western U.S. for a little over a week, but my mind is still lingering somewhere between the red cliffs and forested trails of Prince Edward Island. Earlier this month, we officially kicked off our 2025 Peregrine Accelerator with a cohort retreat on this charming island, bringing together members of eight project teams working across the North Atlantic region of the U.S. and Canada. It was our first time all in the same room—and what a room it turned out to be.

This year’s cohort is tackling a rich mix of challenges and opportunities tied to the unique coastal and forested landscapes of the region. During our time together, strong themes began to surface: the urgent need for coastal resilience; the importance of restoring and reconnecting landscapes and habitats; and the essential role of Indigenous leadership in guiding conservation forward. We didn’t engineer these commonalities, they emerged naturally as teams shared stories of their work, their communities, and their hopes for the future.

We also spent time learning from local Mi’kmaq leaders, whose generous storytelling and presence reminded us that conservation doesn’t begin with a project plan—it begins with relationship, respect, and history. One of my favorite moments was sitting quietly in the dunes at PEI National Park, listening to a local naturalist share the geological and cultural story of the land beneath our feet. It was a reminder of how much these landscapes can teach us if we slow down to listen.

The work ahead for this cohort is ambitious. But after spending just a few days together, it’s clear that the group is already beginning to forge the kinds of relationships that will support long-term impact: rooted in place, responsive to community, and strengthened through collaboration. There was laughter, deep conversation, and opportunities to begin to strategize around fundraising and collaboration. One participant described the retreat as “intensive, supportive, and incredibly energizing,” while another shared, “I feel part of something bigger—this shared purpose gives me new perspective and motivation.”

That sense of shared purpose is exactly what we hoped for. The next six months of the Accelerator will be busy—coaching, peer exchange, refining strategies, and raising resources—but I have no doubt that the relationships built on the island will carry this cohort through. There’s something powerful about being in a space where leaders from different places, sectors, and identities can come together not just to learn, but to belong.

We’re so grateful to the funders and partners who made this gathering possible. And to the cohort: thank you for showing up with such openness, curiosity, and care. The work ahead is hard—but you’re not doing it alone.

Learn more about the Accelerator program and current and past cohorts at peregrineconservationimpact.org.

At the Salazar Center’s 2025 International Symposium on Conservation Impact, we will be exploring ways communities in North America can rethink how we can leverage nature’s benefits to build strong communities and local economies. Kate Potter, Executive Director of the Canadian Biosphere Network, will be moderating a session on ‘Where Community Meets Economy’—for which this reflection sets the stage, exploring how the Canadian Biosphere model helps us rethink how conservation can intersect with economic development.

In 2022, over 100 nations—including Canada—committed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, pledging to protect 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030 and restore the integrity, resilience, and connectivity of natural ecosystems by 2050. With just five years left to meet these ambitious targets, Canada’s 19 biosphere regions (also known as UNESCO-designated biosphere reserves) are showing what modern conservation can look like: not as isolated protection, but as a living partnership between people and nature. These regions redefine conservation as community-driven, place-based work that blends Indigenous leadership, local knowledge, and scientific insight—where sustainability, human well-being, and ecological health are deeply interconnected. As part of the 700+ sites in the global UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves, Canada’s biosphere regions are uniquely positioned to offer scalable, replicable solutions for the urgent biodiversity and climate challenges of our time.

Guided by the Canadian Biosphere Regions Association (CBRA), these regions champion a bold and unconventional approach to biodiversity protection—prioritizing harmony between people and nature while addressing modern challenges such as climate change, working landscapes, and habitat loss.

Canadian biosphere regions embrace the idea of working landscapes—places where people actively live, work, and grow alongside nature. This concept ensures that conservation doesn’t come at the expense of human prosperity but instead fosters mutual benefits. For example, in Ontario, the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve implemented a co-governed wild rice restoration project with local partners and in Georgian Bay, they implemented the Integrated Community Energy and Climate Action Project that involves regional prioritization, action and implementation efficiencies among the local municipalities and First Nations. And in Alberta, the Waterton Biosphere Reserve worked with agricultural producers to implement beneficial management practices to steward their grasslands, riparian, and aquatic habitats and the biodiversity on local farms and ranches.

These projects exemplify how managed landscapes can both support economic vitality and protect ecosystems, creating a model for sustainability.

While preserving nature is a cornerstone of biosphere regions, equally important is their focus on community resilience and empowerment. These regions act as a bridge between people and the environment, offering tools, knowledge, and collaborative strategies to build futures where both can prosper.

The unconventional conservation model of biosphere regions comes with its hurdles. Funding remains largely project-based, hindering the long-term scaling of impactful initiatives. There continues to be a disconnect with public perception and political decision-making when it comes to recognizing the environment as the foundation of both the economy and human survival. Engaging multiple stakeholders —including municipal governments, Indigenous Nations, conservation groups, and private landowners — takes time. But the model also opens doors to innovation and collaboration. It offers the opportunity to build stronger partnerships with Indigenous communities and co-develop governance models. Biosphere reserves can advocate for biodiversity policies at provincial and local levels to embed sustainability into future development. Finally, Biosphere Reserves help us recognize the value of ecosystem services can help integrate conservation into economic and policy decisions.

Canadian biosphere regions are critical players in implementing Canada’s 2030 Nature Strategy. Their efforts align with 19 of the strategy’s 23 targets, demonstrating place-based conservation and sustainable land management at its best. Through projects like tree planting under the 2 Billion Trees Initiative, climate monitoring stations in Manicouagan-Uapishka, and ecosystem service assessments in Fundy, biosphere regions are directly advancing the strategy’s goals. Their unique ability to combine science, traditional knowledge, and community collaboration ensures that both ecosystems and people thrive in the face of modern challenges.

Together, these regions illuminate a path where conservation, community, and economic sustainability converge—a legacy of balance for future generations.

For more information, you can read our full report.

As we continue to scale up these innovative, place-based approaches to conservation, we’re excited to explore these ideas further at the 2025 International Symposium on Conservation Impact and connect with others who are reimagining what conservation can look like in practice.

Having dedicated much of my life to conserving our nation’s lands and waters and to reconnecting people—especially young people—to the outdoors, it brought me immense joy to see the Great American Outdoors Act pass the Senate with such substantial bipartisan support. Even in these most uncertain of times in our country, our public lands serve as a steadfast symbol of unity.

The Great American Outdoors Act builds on a foundation created by President Obama and the Department of Interior a decade ago. In 2010, we launched the America’s Great Outdoors initiative, striving to make our federal government a better partner and support community-driven conservation and outdoor recreation efforts. We created more than 100 projects under the banner of America’s Great Outdoors. Nearly a quarter of those projects restored and provided recreational access to rivers and other waterways around the US. Another 23 of them resulted in the construction of new trails and improved recreational sites. We created and enhanced parks in our cities, too, and kickstarted initiatives to educate young people and connect them to nature. I am proud to say each of these efforts was grassroots and locally driven—an unprecedented approach for our federal government.

It was this work that helped set the stage for legislation like the Great American Outdoors Act to garner such tremendous public support. Last month, more than 800 conservation groups from around the country sent a letter to congressional leadership supporting the passage of the Act. Then, to bolster this call to action, five former Secretaries of Interior wrote to Congress, urging them to pass the bill with no amendments. It worked.

The Great American Outdoors Act makes a commitment to public lands, the likes of which has never been made before in the US: $900 million, annually and in perpetuity, to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This fund provides monies and matching grants to federal, state, and local governments for the acquisition of land and water, and easements on land and water, for the benefit of all Americans. It is intended to support recreation and to protect our natural treasures in the form of public lands. It is critical to ensuring future generations of Americans can enjoy all the opportunities of the outdoors.

The Great American Outdoors Act also sets aside $9.5 billion to tackle the staggering and longstanding maintenance backlog in our national parks—which is presently estimated to be at $20 billion. Maintaining the roads and bridges, visitor centers, historic buildings, trails, and campgrounds for more than 300 million annual visitors is an enormous task, and one that has been increasingly kicked down the road in recent years. By committing these funds now, we can avoid, at least in part, passing this burden on to future generations.

Lastly, this act provides much needed stimulus to an important industry. In recent months, jobs that depend on tourism in our national parks, forests, and wilderness areas have seen the same downturn many other industries have experienced. The funding committed to these places through the Great American Outdoors Act is expected to create tens of thousands of new jobs, aiding in the recovery of the communities who welcome us into their vast and iconic backyards.

As we’ve reckoned with the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re reminded anew of the importance of our public lands and access to the outdoors. I applaud the current Senate for the passage of this important Act, and eagerly await the final hurdles to its enactment as the law of the land.

As a friend and partner of the Network for Landscape Conservation, the Salazar Center shares the sentiments and values outlined in the following statement. We are grateful for the opportunity to help the NLC amplify this message, and to add our own voice to this call for change in the conservation community. 

Dear Network friends,

The Network for Landscape Conservation is committed to embodying and advancing diverse, equitable, and inclusive conservation. This core value is a fundamental pillar of our work and of the collaborative landscape conservation movement overall. We condemn the systemic anti-black racism and injustice that has pervaded our country for 400 years, as most recently reflected in the horrific murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others. We acknowledge the racist roots of the conservation movement itself, and how it has too often ignored or trampled the voices, needs, and rights of People of Color and Indigenous communities on the landscape with tragic consequences—and made people feel unwelcome and unsafe like Christian Cooper while birding in Central Park. We embrace the urgent need for concerted action and societal change.

We also acknowledge that the Network’s initial steps to live up to our core values pale in comparison to the need for justice, equity, inclusion, and human dignity for all people across our landscapes and our society. We humbly pledge to listen, to learn (and unlearn), and to evolve, building on the emerging foundation of action underway in our work:

• We have provided in-depth diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice training to many staff and leadership, and will provide training to the entire 30-person leadership by the end of this year. We are also reviewing Network programs, participation, and governance through this vital lens.
• We will publish later this summer a report on diversity and inclusion in landscape conservation partnerships, in collaboration with the Salazar Center for North American Conservation. We have much to learn from the partnerships who share their experiences and insights in this report.
• Our Landscape Conservation Catalyst Fund includes specific funding focused on supporting Indigenous-led landscape conservation partnerships, as well as an overall emphasis on partnerships that are meaningfully focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
• In our associated Peer Learning Program, Catalyst Fund grantees have identified cross-cultural collaboration as a major focus, and we have begun raw and honest conversations about privilege and power, racism in conservation, decolonizing conservation, and more—learning from those who can speak from a lifetime of personal experience and perspective.

Is this enough? Not by any means. It is only a start, and the Network pledges that our core values will increasingly be reflected in action—with your help. Our shared landscapes can inspire and connect people, and start to heal these societal wounds. Please let us know what you are doing and how we can do better as a Network.

Signed,
Julie Regan, Network Co-Chair; Ernest Cook, Network Co-Chair; and Emily Bateson, Network Director

Photograph of “Raise Up,” a sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas on the grounds of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Credit: Emily Bateson.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic turned our world upside down, the Salazar Center had built its mission and values around something that many scientists and policymakers are now calling for to safeguard humanity from the next would-be pandemic: protecting and restoring healthy, intact natural systems. While there have been calls to ban so-called “wet” markets and illegal wildlife trade, it’s bigger than that. Over the past several weeks, articles have proliferated about the connections between human health and the natural world, as well as the link between public health issues and climate change. Here’s what we’ve learned.

Humans are increasingly encroaching on and fragmenting our planet’s ecosystems and landscapes—building roads and subdivisions, extracting resources such as timber and groundwater, and converting previously wild lands for agriculture. These activities have myriad effects. Disrupted ecosystems tend to lose their biggest predators first, leaving behind smaller species that reproduce in large numbers and have immune systems more capable of carrying diseases without succumbing to them. At the same time, by turning forests into farmland and erecting homes in the wildland-urban interface, we’re more likely to come into contact with the wildlife that remain in these areas—no wet market required. Almost half of the new diseases that jumped from animals to humans (zoonotic pathogens) after 1940 can be traced to changes in land use, agriculture, or wildlife interactions. And, not only are humans destroying natural habitats, we’re driving climate change, which in turn is reducing the amount of habitat available to any given species, shifting species’ natural ranges, or both, further increasing the chances that these animals will inadvertently cross paths with people. That’s not all. As temperatures warm and biodiversity decreases, ecosystems are knocked further off balance, and animals are mixing in new and unexpected ways, providing even more opportunities for diseases to spread. In short, human impacts not only make it more likely that an ecosystem is susceptible to harboring viruses like COVID-19, they also increase the chances that people will come into contact with the species carrying those diseases.

Changing human behavior on a scale effective enough to prevent another pandemic like COVID-19 is a tall order, but there is also much to build upon and be learned from the current crisis. Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International, for example, points out that, “There’s going to be right places for disease control, and they may largely overlap the right places for biodiversity.” And, scientists from Stanford have also suggested that relatively small buffer zones, such as tree farms or reforestation projects, around biodiversity-rich areas could dramatically lessen the likelihood of human-wildlife interaction. What does this mean in practice? If we learn from this crisis and enact some of these measures, efforts to reduce the transmission of zoonotic viruses can do double duty in the fight against climate change: the same healthy biodiverse landscapes that need to be preserved are more resilient to the effects a warming planet, and new or restored buffer zones can also act as a carbon sink.

What is more, the response to the pandemic has made it clear that our society is capable of the rapid and dramatic action required to combat climate change. For example, aggressive steps to reduce planet-warming emissions (investing in solar and wind power, switching to electric cars, requiring more energy-efficient infrastructure) wouldn’t be nearly as disruptive to everyday life as the current stay-at-home orders and would have far-reaching impacts. And, addressing climate change may well necessitate an economic support response not dissimilar from current relief efforts—previously thought infeasible by some—such as providing for those whose jobs are most vulnerable (coal and oil workers, among others) and low-income communities who bear the brunt of pollution and climate-driven disasters like wildfires and floods. City and state policymakers are also demonstrating the power of local and regional leadership in a crisis, and such an approach can pave the way for increased climate change resilience and adaptation planning. The Global Commission on Adaptation estimates that investing just $1.8 trillion in building resilience against climate change over the next decade—by investing in green technology, resilient infrastructure, forest restoration, and renewable energy—could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits, and much of this work can get underway with the support of the same local leaders who are currently directing the COVID-19 response.

There is no doubt that responding to climate change will look different from the response to COVID-19 in many ways. Rather than socially isolating, the fight against climate change will require collaboration and coming together like never before. And the impacts of climate change are slower-building and, in many places around the world, will not affect as many individuals and communities as quickly, visibly, or dramatically as this pandemic has, so conservationists may have a harder time motivating and mobilizing the masses. Nonetheless, the current crisis has underscored that our society is indeed capable of responding to climate change quickly and at-scale; it has also highlighted the need to better prepare our communities and to create more equitable systems under a status quo with more frequent disasters.