Shoshanna Dean

Connecting the Northeast through land, water, and collaboration

July 16, 2024

I was lucky enough to attend the first ever Northeastern North America / Turtle Island Connectivity Summit (NENAM) in Montréal / Tiohtià:ke, Canada, hosted by our friends at the Quebec Labrador Foundation, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, and the Staying Connected Initiative. The Salazar Center’s efforts focus on the continental scale, so it was especially exciting to attend a conference where the attendees were collectively focused on their impact on a shared and beloved landscape. The spirit of the gathering was centered on transcending borders and sectors to recognize that humans, plants, and wildlife need connected landscapes to thrive.

NENAM brought together practitioners, government representatives, agencies, tribal representatives, and funders to create a regional roadmap to better understand their challenges and achieve a resilient and connected Northeastern North America.

The Salazar Center also wants to protect this ecologically diverse and important geography. We plan to hold our second Peregrine Accelerator for Conservation Impact – a tailored training, mentorship, and peer-learning program designed to identify and strengthen innovative conservation projects – in the North Atlantic Transboundary region.

This region encompasses seven U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. The landscape has even been identified by The Nature Conservancy as one of their four globally significant core areas, due to the region’s critical potential to conserve biodiversity, act as a carbon sink, and provide resilience in the face of climate change. From the Atlantic coast to the Adirondacks and Appalachians, a host of plant and animal species rely on an intact and conserved landscape to survive. The collaborative work being done by the organizations at NENAM is a vital step to ensuring species can move between habitats, particularly in the face of a changing climate that is pushing many to higher elevations and latitudes.

Takeaways

I learned so much from this impressive group. These are a few of the takeaways that will stick with me from NENAM:

1. Indigenous nations are leading the way

Indigenous groups are responsible for stewarding 80% of the world’s biodiversity, despite making up only 5% of the world’s population. Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge is continuously proving to be critical for protecting intact landscapes. The tribes and First Nations of the northeast are leading a multitude of impressive efforts to establish Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs), restore free flowing rivers, and reignite the traditional stewardship of their ancestral lands. For too long the conservation community kept Indigenous groups out of critical conversations, and the time is now to elevate and collaborate with those who have stewarded the land for time immemorial. A particularly poignant moment was when Elder Dr. Albert D. Marshall Sr., Moose Clan of the Mi’kmaw Nation, Mi’ma’ki encouraged us all to “walk together with the uniqueness we have been given” when doing this critical work.

2. Conservation wins when different sectors come together

One aspect of NENAM that particularly impressed me was the diversity of sectors represented. The audience comprised transportation agencies, public works departments, environmental nonprofits, tribal organizations, state and municipal leaders, landscape scale collaboratives, and more. This diverse group of representatives meant that the discussions, particularly in the breakout groups, yielded thoughts and insights that were innovative and integrative of the many sectors represented. I am excited to see the final roadmap because it will reflect a multitude of ideas and perspectives historically kept out of the landscape connectivity conversation.

Panel on the work different organizations and entities are doing to enhance landscape connectivity efforts in the region and beyond.

3. We need innovative financing and funding

It is no secret that conservation remains one of the least funded sectors, despite the critical benefits and risk-reduction that nature provides to humans. The global $700 billion financing gap is one of the starkest examples of this, demonstrating that we can no longer afford to do business as usual when it comes to funding conservation. I was excited to hear examples of how leaders in this region are working to explore new ways of funding this critical work. From bonds for nature to cultural ecosystem service valuation, there is a need for a diverse and innovative mix of public and private financing to successfully pay for the work that needs to be done.
My colleague, Catie Boehmer, recently attended the Conservation Finance Network annual bootcamp. She shares her thoughts about the state of conservation funding here.

4. Working at all scales is critical to achieve connectivity

From the smallest wildlife crossing to a dam removal, to a thousand-acre forest reserve, we need to be thinking of landscape connectivity across all scales. This was made evident by the diversity of work that was shared throughout the summit. And importantly, a connected landscape can work to scale up solutions that are successful on the ground by sharing best practices across stakeholders. When we add it all up, landscape connectivity is the result of a multitude of projects that collectively connect and enhance natural space for humans and wildlife. Because of this, projects of every size are necessary to achieve our goals!

5. Borders are man-made

Wildlife and humans have existed without politically designated borders for millennia and will continue to do so into the future. As the climate changes dramatically and pushes species out of their natural ranges, we must ensure that habitats exist to support their movement. A deer, bear, bird, or bug is not going to care whether they are in the United States or Canada, they will only care if they have the resources needed to support their shift in range. Collaboration across these borders is critical for the ensured survival of us all. Similarly, Indigenous nations such as the Wabanaki have been separated by federal borders. They are still connected by their shared knowledge, traditions, and stewardship of the region, and demonstrate that borders are truly what we make of them.

Final thoughts

It is exciting to see the impressive collaboration towards a shared vision of what connectivity means for the Northeast Atlantic region. I am personally thrilled to be bringing the Peregrine Accelerator to the region in 2025, knowing that there is a strong base of committed and visionary practitioners working to build resilience for the region. We all have our work set out for us to meet global challenges for climate and biodiversity, and the NENAM summit proved that together, we just might get there.

Shoshanna Dean

Connecting to local landscapes from a new perspective

April 25, 2024

Mount Sopris, with the Elk Mountains to the south

When Alex Hager, a KUNC reporter covering the Colorado River basin, asks if you want to go for a ride with EcoFlight, you don’t pass up the opportunity. My chance arose earlier this year when Alex was capturing photos for a piece he was working on regarding the sale of the water rights for the Shoshone Power Plant in Glenwood Canyon to the Colorado River Water Conservation District (check out his story here!). The purchase of these water rights, if funding is secured, will keep the water in the river in perpetuity, ensuring ecological flows for a wide diversity of species, some endangered, whose survival is dependent on a healthy and well-conserved river. EcoFlight is a non-profit dedicated to educating and advocating for the protection of wild places through the use of small aircraft, and opening people’s eyes to landscapes and the importance of goals such as 30×30.

On top of learning about this incredible initiative, I used the opportunity to get into that tiny plane and reflect on a place that is near and dear to my heart, the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado. I have spent the last 6 years living and recreating here, and though I have flown above what locals refer to as “the valley” in large commercial planes, never had I gotten to see this home from this wild perspective.

Two things stuck out to me as we were in flight:

How lucky and privileged I am to live in a place with huge swaths of land conserved publicly and privately, because of countless individuals, organizations, and partnerships committed to protecting the landscapes.
How deeply connected the Roaring Fork Valley is to the greater Colorado river system that supplies water for some 35 million people across the West.

Birds-eye view

I would like to acknowledge that the Roaring Fork Valley is the traditional homelands of the Ute Indian People, who were forcefully removed in the 1800’s following the rapid colonization of the area due to the abundance of minerals such as silver.

A mountain stream cutting through the valley

The Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado is an approximately 70-mile and 928,640 acre landscape that begins west of the Continental divide of Independence Pass, and proceeds to flow through Aspen, Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood Springs, before joining the mighty Colorado river flowing west across the United States and into Mexico. According to a study done by the Colorado Natural Heritage Program in 2022, the area is “one of the most ecologically intact and varied landscapes in Colorado.” Our flight began at the Aspen airport and flew us down the valley to eventually circle the Colorado river flowing through Glenwood Canyon. Though this is one of the most rapidly growing areas in Colorado, it was remarkable to witness the vast swaths of public land that surround the valley, providing critical habitat for wildlife, recreation opportunities for residents and visitors alike, and vital ecosystem services.

As a region that is defined by its abundance of outdoor recreation opportunities, and a long history of ranching and land stewardship, the local populace is exemplary in their passion for conserving these landscapes. One of my favorite stories is of the “Maroon Belles,” a trio of women who came together in the 1960s to advocate for conservation, and eventually “influenced or were directly responsible for 500,000 acres of wilderness designation in or around the Roaring Fork Valley.” Today, there are a plethora of organizations working to conserve biodiversity and build climate resilience for the region, some of my favorites include the Roaring Fork Conservancy, the Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative, Watershed Biodiversity Initative, Wilderness Workshop, Aspen Valley Land Trust, the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, and many more. Though the Roaring Fork Valley faces challenges ranging from high socio-economic inequalities, the historical exclusion of the Ute tribe from the region, climate change, invasive species, and rapid development, I am optimistic that these landscapes will be around for years to come, thanks to the tireless efforts of organizations and residents to protect them.

Part of something greater

It was impossible to sit in the plane and not think about how each bit of snow that falls throughout the winter has the potential to end up 1,450 miles away in Mexico, once the Roaring Fork River joins the Colorado River. It can be tempting to solely focus on local environmental effects and challenges but remembering that the Roaring Fork Valley is part of a larger system stressed the importance of maintaining these landscapes for the wellbeing of humans and ecosystems across the West.

One of the programs I work on at the Salazar Center is the Peregrine Accelerator for Conservation Impact, a funding and capacity building program designed to advance new conservation solutions in priority ecoregions across North America. The goal of focusing the program in a defined and connected region is to build cohesion among a cohort of practitioners working together to protect a similar resource, despite being separated by large distances. For the pilot year of this program, we focused our efforts on the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo basin, an 1,885-mile river that begins in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, flows through two more U.S. States, and into Mexico before ending in the Gulf of Mexico.

The impact of each tributary and landscape on the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo system is profound, highlighting the need for landscape level conservation from headwaters to delta. The same is true of the Colorado river basin, as we have witnessed in recent years as the impacts of climate change, landscape change, and overallocation of water has caused intense stress on water resources across the watershed.

Intact ecosystems are critical for maintaining our water resources, and as the West experiences warmer temperatures and a reduced snowpack, it is ever more critical that conservation of nature is prioritized to ensure we have secure water resources into the future. Mountain communities like the Roaring Fork Valley are undergoing population increases and development pressure at unprecedented rates. As we balance the need for meeting housing and infrastructure needs with conserving our natural resources, maintaining the vision that we are part of something much bigger than our valley can be a driver for preserving intact landscapes.

The opportunity to see a place I love from this perspective was profound and impactful. The next time I hike in the Elk Mountain range, or recreate on the Roaring Fork river, I will remember what it looked like from above, and that every step I take, every initiative I vote for, and every one of my choices regarding this land is connected to something bigger than me, and for that I am grateful. Thank you to Gary from EcoFlight and Alex Hager for the opportunity to connect with the place I call home from above!

Crew of conservationists gets ready to take off

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Sacha Spector

September 19, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Sacha Spector, Program Director, Environment at the Doris Duke Foundation, will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Sacha oversees all of the foundation grantmaking on climate change, land conservation and stewardship, and inclusive conservation. Sacha has held positions as director of conservation science at Scenic Hudson, manager of the Invertebrate Conservation Program at the American Museum of Natural History, and adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. Author/co-author of more than 30 research papers, books and articles, he earned his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Connecticut and his B.S. in environmental biology from Yale University.

The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. DDF’s mission, grantmaking programs and centers are guided by Doris Duke’s will. Learn more about Doris Duke’s life and legacy as well as the history of the Doris Duke Foundation.

Resources:

Building a Durable National Framework for Large Landscape Conservation

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Peter Stein

August 28, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Peter Stein will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Peter joined Lyme Timber Company in 1990 and has significant experience in conservation-oriented forestland and rural land purchases and dispositions. As Lyme’s Managing Director, Peter develops conservation sale strategies on properties being evaluated or managed by Lyme and also leads Lyme’s conservation advisory business.

As of 2020, Lyme raised more than one billion dollars of private capital for investment in high conservation value forests in the United States and Canada. Lyme’s conservation advisory business assists families and companies in the design and execution of conservation transactions, and has so far resulted in more than 900,000 acres of permanent land conservation in 12 states and the Province of Quebec.

Prior to his career with LTC Partners and Lyme, Peter was Senior Vice President of the Trust for Public Land where he directed conservation real estate acquisitions in the Northeast and Midwest. Peter lectures frequently at graduate schools and professional conferences on conservation investment structures and strategies. Peter is the co-founder of the Conservation Finance Network and the International Land Conservation Network. In addition, he is a former Board Chair of the Land Trust Alliance, served as a founding Commissioner of the Land Trust Accreditation Commission.

Peter earned a B.A. with Highest Honors from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1975 and was a Loeb Fellow and received a Certificate in Advanced Environmental Studies from Harvard University in 1981.

Emily Barbo

What collaborative land conservation can teach us about tackling the climate and biodiversity crises

August 4, 2023

Climate change and biodiversity loss are interlinked urgent crises. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, in partnership with the Network for Landscape Conservation (NLC) and the University of Montana, recently published a working paper, ‘How Landscape Conservation Partnerships Are Working to Address Climate Change’ examining how U.S. land conservation collaborative partnerships are addressing climate change. It presents effective practices and recommendations that can accelerate and broaden the benefits of landscape conservation and restoration in meeting climate goals.

And the Salazar Center’s upcoming International Symposium on Conservation Impact focuses on nature-positive solutions and how they can catapult our communities towards durable, high-impact outcomes for climate, biodiversity, and human well-being.

So, the NLC and Salazar Center teamed up to host a webinar series that highlights some of the key findings of the report as an important primer for folks interested in participating in the Symposium. We chatted with several of the contributors in this collaboration to learn more about the work at the intersection of climate and conservation.

Q: What is your role with NLC? How is your work with NLC connected to Nature-based Solutions?

Answer from Ernest Cook, Network for Landscape Conservation (NLC)

I am the Director for the Network for Landscape Conservation (NLC). NLC started over 10 years ago to develop a network of diverse and inclusive community-grounded partnerships throughout the United States and cross-border regions that conserve the resilient landscapes that sustain us all. We work to advance collaborative, community-grounded conservation at the landscape scale as an essential approach to connect and protect nature, culture, and community. For this reason, we believe that landscape conservation is a nature-based solution, looking at the landscape across jurisdictions and boundaries to adapt to the impacts of a changing land-use and natural processes due to the impacts of climate change.

To achieve this work, NLC provides a space to connect people to share and build knowledge and information. Through this work, we identify with partners their strengths and needs to inform partners and the public. This process led us to investigate the ways that diverse landscape conservation partners are addressing the impact of climate change, the challenges, share successes and highlight opportunities in this working paper. We hope this paper inspires others to mitigate and adapt to climate change at the landscape scale. The pace we feel is needed to address the challenges we face.

Q: Why did NLC and Lincoln embark on this project? What do you hope the paper will change/inspire/impact? How does the webinar series fit into that equation?

Answer from Kat Lyons, Co-Author, ‘How Landscape Conservation Partnerships Are Working to Address Climate Change’

The goal of this working paper was to explore the readiness of landscape conservation partnerships to address climate change by including mitigation and adaptation strategies in landscape conservation work. Landscape conservation initiatives collaborate with partners to implement conservation at scale however, little is known about how landscape conservation initiatives integrate climate science and/or climate mitigation and climate adaptation strategies to scale their impact.

NLC and Lincoln embarked on this project to learn more about the role of landscape conservation initiatives and share their strategies with the conservation community to stimulate changes in practices, policy, partnerships and funding to accelerate the pace and scale of climate action. We hope that this inspires others interested in climate action to consider learning from and implementing the effective landscape scale approach and design to strategically address the impact of climate, like excessive heat, flooding, and sea-level rise, all of which cross jurisdictional boundaries. We can support and accelerate change by learning from these case studies who are working with partners to scale up proven solutions across their communities.

Often when we talk about landscape conservation, we discuss a vision, a framework and a structure to implement conservation. This is all true, but to make a great impact, there is a need to address some common barriers to working with many partners at the landscape scale. In the webinar series, we are working to:

Highlight and discuss the recommendations found in the report to address barriers these initiatives faced to advance their work to address climate impacts.

Connect practitioners to ideas and to each other for idea creation and implementation support.

Share the voices of practitioners in the field to inspire others to address climate impacts.

Q: How did this collaboration come about and how do the themes of the paper connect to the Symposium?

Answer from Jen Kovecses, Salazar Center for North American Conservation

The Network for Landscape Conservation are natural partners for the Salazar Center – we share similar interests, values, and goals and have worked collaboratively for several years. This spring, as the Salazar Center was finalizing our Symposium theme to focus on nature-based solutions and their contributions to climate and biodiversity goals, the NLC released the working paper on landscape conservation partnerships are tackling climate change in their work. This bit of serendipity seemed too good to pass up and so together we conceived the idea of a webinar series that would explore some of the major recommendations of the working paper as a foundation for the conversation leading into the Symposium.

Nature based solutions have long been part of the toolbox that landscape conservation partnerships use to create desired biodiversity and conservation outcomes. Understanding what strategies landscape conservation partnerships are testing to address climate change in their work is a critical component of meeting the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. Symposium 2023 will expand on this conversation by exploring multiple facets of how practitioners, researchers, policymakers, the private sector, and funders are integrating nature-based solutions into their work. How do we make sure that as we collectively incorporate more nature into our climate solutions that the costs and benefits are equitably shared? Can nature-based solutions be a driver for truly transforming our social, economic, policy, and ecosystems to meet the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss? What role does the private sector play in solving these twin crises? These are just a few of the themes we will collectively explore during Symposium 2023 – we hope you will join us in the conversation!

Interested in learning more? Watch the webinar recordings and register for upcoming events. And be sure to join us for the Salazar Center’s International Symposium on Conservation Impact this October in Denver, Colorado. Registration is now open!