Private Lands Partners Day 2024 in Central Oregon
Private Lands Partners Day 2024 is coming to Redmond, Oregon in October!
Private Lands Partners Day 2024 is coming to Redmond, Oregon in October!
Partnerscapes board members and staff traveled to Washington DC in early May primarily to meet with some of the agencies that work in partnership with private landowners to achieve shared goals.
The 2018 Farm Bill expired last year and even though a new Farm Bill has yet to be approved, there remains an unprecedented amount of conservation funding available through USDA-NRCS.
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.
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."
The Administration has released its proposed Federal budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The budget includes $80 million for the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program a 33% increase over the budget enacted for the current year.
A group of 80 plus landowners and collaborative partners gathered for the Western Lands Partnership Forum in early January in Las Vegas, Nevada. Partnerscapes and staff from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife program worked together to plan and deliver a unique forum.
Federal funding for conservation, specifically under the headings of ecosystem restoration and climate, has truly reached “once-in-a-lifetime” levels with passage of huge pieces of funding legislation such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the 117th Congress.