Around the world, conservation issues transcend the legal and geographic reach of existing jurisdictions, institutions, and organizations. While conservation challenges need to be addressed at all scales, large landscape conservation works more effectively across legal and physical boundaries. As the impacts of climate change become more urgent, it is increasingly important that the global land conservation community act at the large landscape scale to ensure the integrity and resilience of ecosystems and the protection of land and water resources. Through peer learning, we bring together leaders advancing landscape-scale conservation initiatives that are multijurisdictional, multipurpose, and multistakeholder to advance collaborative approaches to solving key challenges in their landscapes.
Resources & Education
Recent ILCN and external resources related to large landscape conservation.
2021 Global Congress Session Recordings
Over the past two years, the International Land Conservation Network has convened the first cohort of the Large Landscape Peer Learning Initiative (LLPLI) to share insights and strategies regarding finance, governance, law and policy, and stewardship. These exchanges and in-depth strategic collaborations between large landscape conservation leaders from California, the Appalachian Trail in the eastern United States, Chile’s Mediterranean Zone and Chilean Patagonia have generated a variety of significant, strategic and replicable results. Come meet several of the key participants and learn along with them regarding the power of peer exchange and collaborative processes.
In this webinar, 2019 Kingsbury Browne Fellow Michael Whitfield makes a case for holistic landscape conservation efforts, discusses elements of holistic landscape collaboration that meet both ecological and social goals, and examines the consequences of their implementation in multiple settings. This webinar, which is moderated by Jim Levitt, draws from Whitfield's 2019 working paper, "Toward Holistic Landscape Conservation in the 21st Century".
The Large Landscape Peer Learning Initiative (LLPLI) is an effort designed to: help articulate, through peer exchange and sharing of best practices, the strategic vision of large landscape conservation initiatives around the globe, and to monitor the implementation of these strategic visions over time.
In America we enjoy an amazing conservation legacy. However, all of Planet Earth is in the midst of an environmental and social crisis. Here in the United States, observers often see conflict between efforts to conserve nature in the face of massive loss of biological diversity versus efforts to provide all our people with suitable housing and access to adequate food, clean air and water, and outdoor recreation. Yet both of these challenges are symptomatic of the same threats: a burgeoning human population with out-of-scale environmental impacts, ecological and social fragmentation, and the ever more serious threat of climate change. The emergence of landscape conservation through robust human community collaboration that provides for the non-human interests of wildlife and nature is seen as a necessary approach to meet these daunting challenges. Across the country there are many examples of conservation success through landscape collaboration, but the concept is hindered by incomplete application and a lack of suitable measures of program outcomes. In this paper we make a case for holistic landscape conservation efforts, discuss proposed elements for holistic landscape collaborations that meet both ecological and social goals, and examine the consequences of their implementation in multiple settings.
In response to increasing activity at the large landscape scale, leaders from the public, private and nongovernmental sectors participated in two national policy dialogues and many other informal discussions in 2009.
Experts
Shawn Johnson
Managing Director, Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy, University of Montana
Shawn Johnson is Managing Director of the Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and Co-Director of the Center’s graduate certificate program in Natural Resources Conflict Resolution. Shawn organizes and leads strategic planning and capacity building workshops for a wide variety of organizations focused on natural resource policy and management and has served as a facilitator and mediator on issues ranging from land use planning and forest management to conservation priority setting and landscape conservation and stewardship. For the past ten years, he has helped advance a joint effort between the Center and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy on large landscape conservation. The joint effort explores questions of policy, leadership, funding, science, and governance at landscape scales, where there is often a mismatch between the scale of an existing challenge or opportunity and that of existing organizations and jurisdictions. In May 2011, Shawn helped organize and convene a group of large landscape conservation practitioners that led to a new network of practitioners throughout North America who are working to improve community and conservation outcomes at the large landscape scale -- the Network for Landscape Conservation.
Hernan Maldinic
Former Executive Director, Tompkins Conservation
Hernan Mladinic was born in Punta Arenas, the largest city in Patagonia, in front of the Strait of Magellan. In 1990 he graduated as a Sociologist at the University of Chile and 1999 he completed his Master of Arts in Environmental Studies at the University of Toronto. Between 1989 and 1994, he coordinated the Antarctic and Environment program of the Foundation for the Development of the Magellan region (FIDE XII), organizing campaigns and international outreach meetings about the Southern and Antarctic environmental problems. In 1994 he joined the Ministry of Planning, and between 1995-1997 he served as Ministerial Regional Secretary for Planning of the Aisén Region (Northern Patagonia). In 2000, after his studies in Canada, he joined the National Environment Commission (now the Ministry of Environment) in the areas of inter-ministerial coordination and strategic environmental information. In 2002, he assumed the role of new business manager in the Cleaner Production Center INTEC, which later merged with Fundación Chile, becoming a researcher of the Sustainable Energy Program of the Foundation's Environment Area. Between 2004 and 2008 he worked in the Planning and Management Department of the National Petroleum Company in the areas of Environment, Renewable Energy, Social Responsibility and Business Intelligence. During that same period, he was a graduate professor of the Social-Environmental Economy course of the Master in Environmental Management and Planning of the University of Chile. From July 2008 to April 2018 he was Executive Director of the Pumalín Park and Project (later Tompkins Conservation).
Nat Page
Director, Fundatia ADEPT Transilvania
Nat studied Zoology at Oxford University, and then oriental languages at London University. After 14 years as a diplomat, in various postings including Romania, he studied agriculture (1994-95) and returned to his original farming and nature conservation interests. Since 1996 he has been owner and manager of a 65 hectare livestock farm in the UK. In 2004 he helped to establish Fundația ADEPT Transilvania, an NGO dedicated to protecting Romania’s High Nature Value (HNV) farmed landscapes, and the small-scale farming communities that have created them. As well as carrying out local and regional projects in agri-environment policy and practice, and farm advisory services, ADEPT has an increasing national and European role in the policy and practice of supporting Europe’s HNV farmed landscapes. Fundația ADEPT won the top EU prizes for communication with farmer in 2012 (Communication with Stakeholders category), and 2013 (Telling the Story - Innovation category). ADEPT also won top EU prize for the NGO bringing biggest benefits to local people in a protected area, in 2014. Nat has developed and managed a number of major projects studying and promoting social, economic and biodiversity-related aspects of the sustainability of traditional farmed landscapes. He is involved in ecological surveys and studies of HNV landscapes; practical landscape-scale HNV farmland management projects centred on farm advisory services; training programmes at national level for example through Romania’s National Network for Rural Development; and policy development at national level in Romania, and at EU level. The guiding principle of his approach is: strategic use of Europe’s HNV farmed landscapes, combining innovative thinking and integrated management with traditional systems at all stages of the food production and supply chain, can contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, food quality and food security – and offer good income to the farmers.
Emily Bateson
Director, Network for Landscape Conservation
Emily is Director of the Network for Large Landscape Conservation (NLC), a fiscally sponsored project of the Center. Before becoming Director, she was NLC’s Co-Chair, and helped move the collaborative from its early formative stages to a more established, funded, and widespread network with active strategies and specific programs to help advance conservation at the landscape scale. Emily was previously the conservation director at the Highstead Foundation and coordinator of the New England Wildlands and Woodlands Initiative. She has worked in whole systems conservation for 30 years, including advocacy to protect the U.S./Canadian Georges Bank fishery and ecosystem as senior staff at the Conservation Law Foundation; ecological land protection philanthropy as associate director at Sweet Water Trust; and large landscape conservation innovation as co-founder and first director of Two Countries, One Forest/Deux Pays, Une Forêt in the Northern Appalachian/Acadian region of the U.S. and Canada.
Greg Moore
CEO Emeritus & Special Advisor, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Greg Moore was the founder and longtime President & CEO of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. During his more than three decades of leadership, the Conservancy grew to become one of the most successful, innovative and accomplished nonprofit support organizations to any national park in the United States. The Conservancy is also recognized for its results in urban park design, cross sector partnerships, large scale conservation and community engagement and support. Under Moore’s leadership, the Conservancy provided almost $680 million in support to park projects and programs at the Golden Gate National Parks. During his tenure, the Conservancy has received numerous awards for excellence in interpretation, conservation, philanthropic and park improvement efforts. Today, Moore continues to advise the Conservancy regarding special projects and programs. Moore has served as an advisor to park projects throughout the country and internationally, in Australia, Chile, China, Italy, New Zealand, and South Africa. Moore holds a B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources from U.C. Berkeley and completed a Mid-career Fellowship in Environmental Planning at the University of Washington. He currently serves on the boards of the Conservation Lands Foundation and the National Parks Friends’ Alliance.
Dennis Shaffer
Director of Landscape Conservation, Appalachian Trail Conservancy
Dennis Shaffer, Director of Landscape Conservation, Appalachian Trail Conservancy Dennis is responsible for developing and directing the Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership in cooperation with a diverse array of local, state, and national conservation partners. He is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and Antioch New England Graduate School. Dennis has spent over 30 years serving in various capacities leading conservation organizations and land protection programs. His previous experience includes executive director of the Green Mountain Club, the director of the San Juan County Land Bank, a field office director for The Trust for Public Land, and the vice president for stewardship for the Vermont Land Trust. Dennis has also served on numerous boards, advisory groups and committees working on issues of land conservation.
Sharon Farrell
Executive Vice President, Projects, Stewardship & Science, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Key Partners and Networks for Additional Resources
