Anthropogenic Landscapes: The Idea of PLACES
September 30, 2015
To provide observations and information on the emerging fields of landscape scale conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development.
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Watching the development of a national heritage area is a bit like observing the formation of a solar system. Partners large and small are attracted to the heritage area idea like planets around a sun and if the perceived benefits are powerful enough the gravitational force will bind them together around a unified vision. With the conservation movement’s interest in how to build effective large landscape networks examining how this actually happens on the ground might be productive. What lessons can we learn from the formation of the Washington Maritime National Heritage Area?
The origin story of the landscape scale conservation movement has yet to be told. However, in the United States, there has been a long tradition of managing fish and wildlife habitat with the understanding that species preservation required the conservation of wider ecosystems. Today the movement has received reinforcement from the nonprofit sector organizations such as the Network for Landscape Conservation.
It should come as no surprise to readers of the Living Landscape Observer that conserving large landscapes in the current political climate is no easy task. There are threats to our public lands and proposals to defund the federal programs that conserve our cultural and natural resources. However, the bigger issue is the underlying erosion of landscape scale work throughout our national government. There are systemics challenges to all these efforts that need to be better understood.
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.
On March 16, 2017 the Whitehouse released its budget framework styled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again and the news was not great for programs that support large landscape conservation. For the FY 2018 the Department of Interior faces a proposed 12 % budget reduction and the Environmental Protection Agency is facing a 31% reduction. In general this brief document does not identify where the pain will fall except on the often pummeled National Heritage Areas. And while only the first step in the budget process, this proposal needs to be taken seriously.
Watching the development of a national heritage area is a bit like observing the formation of a solar system. Partners large and small are attracted to the heritage area idea like planets around a sun and if the perceived benefits are powerful enough the gravitational force will bind them together around a unified vision. With the conservation movement’s interest in how to build effective large landscape networks examining how this actually happens on the ground might be productive. What lessons can we learn from the formation of the Washington Maritime National Heritage Area?
The origin story of the landscape scale conservation movement has yet to be told. However, in the United States, there has been a long tradition of managing fish and wildlife habitat with the understanding that species preservation required the conservation of wider ecosystems. Today the movement has received reinforcement from the nonprofit sector organizations such as the Network for Landscape Conservation.
It should come as no surprise to readers of the Living Landscape Observer that conserving large landscapes in the current political climate is no easy task. There are threats to our public lands and proposals to defund the federal programs that conserve our cultural and natural resources. However, the bigger issue is the underlying erosion of landscape scale work throughout our national government. There are systemics challenges to all these efforts that need to be better understood.
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.
On March 16, 2017 the Whitehouse released its budget framework styled America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again and the news was not great for programs that support large landscape conservation. For the FY 2018 the Department of Interior faces a proposed 12 % budget reduction and the Environmental Protection Agency is facing a 31% reduction. In general this brief document does not identify where the pain will fall except on the often pummeled National Heritage Areas. And while only the first step in the budget process, this proposal needs to be taken seriously.