Work at a Landscape Scale
A Secretarial Order issued in 2009 instructed the various bureaus and services within the Department of Interior to work together and craft a way forward to address large-scale threats - including those of climate change impacts - in managing the nation's valued resources. In response, a national network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) were formed.
Twenty-two LCCs make up the national network. These are public-private partnerships organized to support conservation efforts at landscape scales. They cross state borders to encourage coordination and planning necessary to address the environmental threats that are beyond the ability of any one organization’s ability to tackle. LCCs serve as a venue to bring together conservation scientists and natural resource managers from federal and state agencies, NGOs, and tribal governments or indigenous communities to identify shared conservation goals and develop the tools and products necessary for action. They build the capacity to implement emerging science and decision-support tools regionally. Finally, LCCs facilitate conservation planning, design, monitoring, and evaluation in an adaptive management approach.
By assembling the expertise and innovation of the conservation community within the Appalachian region, the Appalachian LCC is promoting more effective collaboration while increasing access to funding and data. The LCC is also applying cutting-edge web-based technology, tools, and training to facilitate the implementation of a strategic conservation framework. Much of the design of this web-based planning tool, or portal, serves to connect the various resource management communities -- across region, taxonomic interest, and sectors -- to achieve adaptive conservation in the 21st Century.
