Last week folks from all over the country gathered in western Montana for the 15th annual Private Lands Partners Day. This year’s meeting returned to the original location and the beginning of Partners for Conservation, which became Partnerscapes. The Blackfoot Watershed, and the highly regarded and accomplished community-based collaborative conservation effort called the Blackfoot Challenge, were the true hosts of the event, even though attendees stayed in Missoula.

Partnerscapes recently received an email from Nusura Seleman Ramadhan an environmental specialist working with the Friends of Usambara society in Tanzania. The description of the organization and its work on all three “legs of the stool” (the ecologic, economic and sociologic aspects of a place) is very familiar to Partnerscapes and all others involved in collaborative community-based conservation in this country.

Former Partnerscapes Board Director and Georgia tree farmer, Reese Thompson, was recognized by Forest Landowners Association as their Landowner of the Year at their National Conference of Private Forest Landowners held recently in Nashville, Tennessee!

Conservation dollars are here. Now the challenge is developing rules, developing relationships and partners, and getting work down on the ground with some pretty aggressive timelines for implementation.

The federal funding environment for natural resource management has changed drastically over the last several years reaching a level that has been described as “generational."