The Opportunity of a Lifetime for Landscape Scale Conservation
November 23, 2021
To provide observations and information on the emerging fields of landscape scale conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development.
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The Coordinating Committee of the Network for Landscape Conservation gathered for a picture on Boneyard Beach, Bull Island in the Cape Romaine National Wildlife Reserve in South Carolina. The field trip kicked off an April retreat in Charleston South Carolina to finalize the outcomes of the recent National Forum for Landscape Conservationand to identify strategic initiatives to advance the conservation at a landscape scale.The low country region is a great example of a conserved natural landscape with four Federal Wildlife Refuges, designation as the Carolinian-South Atlantic Biosphere Reserve, and ACE Basin Project that manages over 100,000 of protected lands and estuaries. However, it is the cultural heritage of the region, it is one of the centers of Gullah Geechee culture, that makes the landscape of truly global cultural and natural significance.
In Vietnam, our tour guide told us, they call winter the American Season. This is when well-heeled baby boomers come to see a country that figured so large in much of their youth. Some also come to see what has happened to country that they last saw under battle field conditions. What they find is a “communist” country in the throes of entrepreneurial high spirts. Not a wealthy country by any means, but with a GDP growth rate of over 7%. The streets of the cities are lined with small shops and choked with motor scooters. But what of the war, what remains of the landscape of past conflict? Read more about that here.
Scholars from four continents gathered in the World Heritage listed Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a two-day conference on “Interpreting and Representing Slavery and its Legacies in Museums and Sites: International Perspectives” (March 19-20 2018). The conference explored the variety of ways universities, historic sites and museums from around the Atlantic World tell the story of slavery and its far reaching legacy. The conference was sponsored by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the University of Virginia, and the United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) in collaboration with the United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Slave Route Project: Resistance, Liberty, and Heritage.
The National Park Service has a long history of international engagement with ties to other nations, including Canada, dating to the agency’s earliest years. In 1961, during the height of the Cold War, an official Division of International Affairs was created, to advance the aims of conservation and U.S. diplomatic and political pursuits. Learn more about NPS international activities and the significance of the agency’s global ties in this piece by guest observer Joana Arruda.
For this month’s Featured Voice interview, we talk with Don Hellmann, the former Assistant Director for Legislative and Congressional Affairs for the National Park Service. Hellmann ended his 40-year career working with Congress at the beginning of 2017. He spent the last 22 years with the NPS. In the interview, Hellmann provides insight into how the NPS legislative agenda changed over time as well as background on especially memorable bills, including Public Law 104-333, which addressed the future of the Presidio of San Francisco.
The Coordinating Committee of the Network for Landscape Conservation gathered for a picture on Boneyard Beach, Bull Island in the Cape Romaine National Wildlife Reserve in South Carolina. The field trip kicked off an April retreat in Charleston South Carolina to finalize the outcomes of the recent National Forum for Landscape Conservationand to identify strategic initiatives to advance the conservation at a landscape scale.The low country region is a great example of a conserved natural landscape with four Federal Wildlife Refuges, designation as the Carolinian-South Atlantic Biosphere Reserve, and ACE Basin Project that manages over 100,000 of protected lands and estuaries. However, it is the cultural heritage of the region, it is one of the centers of Gullah Geechee culture, that makes the landscape of truly global cultural and natural significance.
In Vietnam, our tour guide told us, they call winter the American Season. This is when well-heeled baby boomers come to see a country that figured so large in much of their youth. Some also come to see what has happened to country that they last saw under battle field conditions. What they find is a “communist” country in the throes of entrepreneurial high spirts. Not a wealthy country by any means, but with a GDP growth rate of over 7%. The streets of the cities are lined with small shops and choked with motor scooters. But what of the war, what remains of the landscape of past conflict? Read more about that here.
Scholars from four continents gathered in the World Heritage listed Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a two-day conference on “Interpreting and Representing Slavery and its Legacies in Museums and Sites: International Perspectives” (March 19-20 2018). The conference explored the variety of ways universities, historic sites and museums from around the Atlantic World tell the story of slavery and its far reaching legacy. The conference was sponsored by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the University of Virginia, and the United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) in collaboration with the United National Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Slave Route Project: Resistance, Liberty, and Heritage.
The National Park Service has a long history of international engagement with ties to other nations, including Canada, dating to the agency’s earliest years. In 1961, during the height of the Cold War, an official Division of International Affairs was created, to advance the aims of conservation and U.S. diplomatic and political pursuits. Learn more about NPS international activities and the significance of the agency’s global ties in this piece by guest observer Joana Arruda.
For this month’s Featured Voice interview, we talk with Don Hellmann, the former Assistant Director for Legislative and Congressional Affairs for the National Park Service. Hellmann ended his 40-year career working with Congress at the beginning of 2017. He spent the last 22 years with the NPS. In the interview, Hellmann provides insight into how the NPS legislative agenda changed over time as well as background on especially memorable bills, including Public Law 104-333, which addressed the future of the Presidio of San Francisco.