The pandemic and pandemic response has made for confounding times. It is hard to imagine a part of our daily lives that has not in some way been impacted. We hope you and your family have stayed healthy, and we want to send our condolences if you have lost someone to illness.
Travel and gathering restrictions have forced us to change the way we do business and to forgo an in-person Private Lands Partners Day for the last two years, which has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow. Partnership-focused conservation thrives with people around the table, and Zoom sometimes feels more like live support for the effort!
However, not all the news is bad. The Administration’s Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful report published earlier this year explicitly outlined a collaborative, locally-developed and partnership focused vision of conservation at the federal level. At the local level, partnership efforts that benefit working landscapes are ongoing despite widespread closing of offices and restrictions on in-person interaction in some locations and within some organizations. Recently enacted and pending federal legislation stands to bring significant, perhaps unprecedented, funding to natural infrastructure and climate change adaptation efforts that will result in more dollars hitting the ground for natural resource partnership-based projects on private land.
We are all keeping our fingers crossed that we will finally turn the page on the “new normal” and get to a “newer normal” that includes the opportunity for landowners and all conservation partners to gather and share freely, in person, without overriding concerns for health and personal safety. As with everything, it has been difficult for Partnerscapes, and all organizations that count on public support, to meet and communicate effectively with potential supporters over the last two years. With that in mind, please consider supporting Partnerscapes and/or your local collaborative effort as we all look forward to a much improved 2022!
