In the latest featured voice, we interview Dr. John Sprinkle about his new book Saving Spaces: Historic Land Conservation in the United States. Dr. Sprinkle is an expert on the development of historic preservation in the United States. He has written widely on the effects of federal preservation policy on local, state, and national history. In this interview, we discuss the linkages and cleavages between historic preservation and environmental conservation as well as the often-times overlooked role of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in urban open space protection.

There is a growing recognition that cultural resources as a part of the larger landscapes. The idea that there is a unity of nature and culture has created a significant opportunity for cultural resource practitioners to contribute to the new field of landscape scale conservation. There are compelling reasons to partner up with this emerging movement. The nature conservation field has long recognized that threats to natural resources occur at multiple and much larger spatial scales than those usually addressed in cultural resource preservation. Ecosystems are adversely affected by impacts that transcend political and disciplinary boundaries. Threats include urban expansion, air and water pollution, deforestation, agriculture intensification, mineral extraction, and of course climate change. The nation’s cultural heritage faces the same threats. Responding with a landscape or regional approach is a better match to the scope of the problem.

Heather Hodges is the Executive Director of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. This piece offers a reflection on the interconnectedness of the Gullah Geechee cultural traditions and the lands on which those traditions were formed. 

The Network for Landscape Conservation has just released a report Path Ways Forward: Progress and Priorities in Landscape Conservation. The report documents the thinking of 200 leading landscape conservation practitioners from the United States, Canada, and Mexico at a November 2017 National Forum on Landscape Conservation. The report also documents the growth of the movement not just by the number of landscape scale projects, but more importantly by the growing understanding of what it means to successfully sustain them.