Eastern Partnership Forum Summary Report
Eastern Partnership Forum summary report now available.
Eastern Partnership Forum summary report now available.
Partnerscapes, staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service–Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, landowners, and other conservation partners gathered the week of January 15th at the National Conservation Training Center to learn from each other and share challenges, opportunities, lessons learned, and networking ideas related to conservation partnerships on private lands in the eastern United States.
Since its inception, Partnerscapes has worked to support partners that work with private landowners and others in delivering partnership-based voluntary conservation in our national landscapes. The hope has been, as we continue to deliver these events and demonstrate a need and interest in this type of work that others will pick up the torch.
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.
Recently introduced bipartisan legislation in both the Senate and House of Representatives would reauthorize the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, which enables wildlife and habitat conservation in all 50 states and territories.
Partnerscapes and staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program are planning an Eastern Partnership Forum for January 2024.
Almost 300 conservation practitioners and landowners gathered July 12-13 in Manhattan, Kansas for the 10th Western Working Lands for Wildlife Workshop, originally slated for 2020 but delayed for three years due to the pandemic.
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!
The Western Partnership Forum did a great job of sharing some of those insights and ideas in real time through social media postings and short videos on both Instagram and Facebook. We have also distilled what the participants had to say in a report now available on our website.
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."