The Next Four Years: Trends in Landscape Scale Conservation
January 2, 2021
To provide observations and information on the emerging fields of landscape scale conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development.
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At every level, conservation practioners labor to understand and balance natural and cultural values at a landscape scale. Globally, this challenge plays out in the push and pull of the World Heritage inscription process. The recent (July 2017) inscription by the World Heritage Committee of the English Lake District highlights some of the challenges and opportunities of attempting to integrate cultural and natural values. There is no question this is a celebrated and iconic landscape, but there have been bumps along the way to gaining World Heritage recognition.
Eastern Maine is the last place on the East Coast where large tracts of forest still meet the sea. On a blue-sky October day at the height of foliage season, I went to explore one such tract – a critical 300-acre parcel that Frenchman Bay Conservancy was considering for purchase. On a landscape scale, conserving it would have been one more step in maintaining the connection between the fabled North Woods and the shores of the Atlantic.
In this piece, originally published in the May 2017 issue of the George Wright Forum (vol 34, no 1), guest observer Rolf Diamant explores the
National Monuments were once an obscure protected area designation. Today they are the big story in major news outlets. Reporters are struggling with names likes Bears Ears, Grand Staircase – Escalante, and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. What put these places in the headlines was the new administration’s signature on an Executive Order authorizing a review all National Monuments designated since January 1, 1996 and specifically those over 100,000 acres. The rush is on to learn more about national monuments.
Public lands in the United States go by a variety of names: Parks, forests, monuments, historical parks, recreation areas, seashores, refuges and more. Though confusing to the public (and even, at times, to agency employees!), each appellation has a “genealogy” of sorts, a history that, if traced, offers insights into the goals and motivations of those who initially pushed for the creation of different types of protected areas. I recently visited the two of the three “National Reserves,” Ebey’s National Historical Reserve in Washington State and the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve and began to wonder when that term first came into use (NB: Both are Affiliated Areas, not National Park units)
At every level, conservation practioners labor to understand and balance natural and cultural values at a landscape scale. Globally, this challenge plays out in the push and pull of the World Heritage inscription process. The recent (July 2017) inscription by the World Heritage Committee of the English Lake District highlights some of the challenges and opportunities of attempting to integrate cultural and natural values. There is no question this is a celebrated and iconic landscape, but there have been bumps along the way to gaining World Heritage recognition.
Eastern Maine is the last place on the East Coast where large tracts of forest still meet the sea. On a blue-sky October day at the height of foliage season, I went to explore one such tract – a critical 300-acre parcel that Frenchman Bay Conservancy was considering for purchase. On a landscape scale, conserving it would have been one more step in maintaining the connection between the fabled North Woods and the shores of the Atlantic.
In this piece, originally published in the May 2017 issue of the George Wright Forum (vol 34, no 1), guest observer Rolf Diamant explores the
National Monuments were once an obscure protected area designation. Today they are the big story in major news outlets. Reporters are struggling with names likes Bears Ears, Grand Staircase – Escalante, and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. What put these places in the headlines was the new administration’s signature on an Executive Order authorizing a review all National Monuments designated since January 1, 1996 and specifically those over 100,000 acres. The rush is on to learn more about national monuments.
Public lands in the United States go by a variety of names: Parks, forests, monuments, historical parks, recreation areas, seashores, refuges and more. Though confusing to the public (and even, at times, to agency employees!), each appellation has a “genealogy” of sorts, a history that, if traced, offers insights into the goals and motivations of those who initially pushed for the creation of different types of protected areas. I recently visited the two of the three “National Reserves,” Ebey’s National Historical Reserve in Washington State and the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve and began to wonder when that term first came into use (NB: Both are Affiliated Areas, not National Park units)