2020 RCP Network Gathering

A message from Bill Labich, RCP Network Coordinator:

Thank you for registering for the  2020 RCP Network Gathering Program  and for exploring the story map!

Each year, the Regional Conservation Partnership (RCP) Network Gathering offers us an unmatched opportunity to advance the practice of collaborative landscape conservation in the Northeastern U.S. We want the Gathering to be a place you can bring your burning questions and make a difference. We hope you will find new ways to work together on shared conservation goals and in ways that further our collective efforts to overcome racism, COVID-19 and climate change.

2020 has been a year of disruption and change, forcing many of us to rethink our plans and expectations and to change how we work, live and play – resilience has become part of our everyday life. Yet even before the pandemic, we had planned to focus on Resilient Regions and Communities and to focus on how achievement of two visionary long-term goals is essential to long-term resilience:

•  The Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities Vision  (W&W, F&C)( (70% of New England in forest, 7% in farmland, permanently free of development and growing half our food by 2060)
•   The 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals  (SDGs) (11, 13, 15, 17) 

We designed the 2020 RCP Network Gathering Program as six virtual events that stretch from Oct. 28, 2020, to March 3, 2021, each event building on the next. We invite you to engage in the 2020 RCP Network Gathering Program at whatever level you wish. Come to one event or all of them. By doing so, you’ll help us choose, as a Network, what issues to address and goals to advance for the next decade, as we collectively work toward a more sustainable and resilient region.

We also encourage you to explore this story map. It is meant to provide you with background on the webinar presentation topics, RCPs and the RCP network and highlight how these fit into the W&W vision, the UN Development goals, and more. We expect it will have value before the upcoming events and later as we pursue our cooperative land conservation goals.

Bill Labich, RCP Network Coordinator

“RCPs can be a force for conservation in several ways that I can picture. The first is to share information, experience, and best practices between organizations. To provide collegiality, support, and advice among peers and to encourage collaborative endeavors. For me, the most significant benefit of working in an RCP is the opportunity for smaller organizations to access larger funding sources that might not otherwise be available to individual organizations or to smaller Land Trusts. The MassConn Sustainable Forest Partnership RCP is a case in point. Over a roughly seven-year period from 2013 to 2019 MassConn has been able to leverage $121,000 of operational support into $10,874,000 of conservation activities.” - Ed Hood, Coordinator, MassConn Sustainable Forest Partnership.

“In addition to the networking opportunities, the RCP Network has provided the Saco Watershed Collaborative with insights for growth – as an RCP as a whole. Knowing what other RCPs are up to and what they are working on allows us to apply their lessons learned and successful strategies to [our partnership]. For example, because our Collaborative is relatively new (less than 5 years old), we weren’t sure if we were ready to handle a large, landscape-scale grant opportunity by ourselves. Connecting with other RCPs has allowed us to understand how we can/should prepare for these opportunities when they arise. ...By leveraging all of our RCP work together, through the RCP Network, we are really activating the old adage: A rising tide lifts all boats. By aggregating and showcasing ALL the work that we can achieve together easily dwarfs the individual work that we could only do by ourselves.” - Robyn Saunders, Project Manager, Saco Watershed Collaborative

“Collaboration and JEDI principles (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) are paramount to the resiliency of regions and communities working to protect the natural areas that we care about. The sustainability and success of each RCP depends on individuals’ abilities to work together to identify shared common goals to increase the collective impact of conservation work being done throughout the northeast.” - Emily Greene, Outreach Coordinator, Saco Watershed Collaborative

“The Mid-Champlain Valley RCP is emerging, and we have just finished drafting our Mission, Vision Statement and Goals. We are a collective of people from northern Addison County, Vermont, working together to support the communities of the Mid-Champlain Valley to preserve, restore and enhance natural systems through sustainable stewardship. Our goals are to provide educational opportunities, collaboration, support and hands-on involvement for those who are interested in stewarding the landscape and learning about our region. The collaboration between partners from towns across the agricultural landscape lets us address common questions and craft solutions to issues together. Sharing the work lets us move faster, and sharing ideas among a wider set of knowledge bases on how to keep the ecosystem healthy and resilient will help develop a consistent approach across the larger landscape.”- Laura Farrell, Coordinator, Mid-Champlain Valley RCP

"As a conservationist, I spend a lot of time thinking about innovative strategies that will help us meet environmental challenges. Regional Conservation Partnerships in and of themselves are such a strategy. I see this in my role as Coordinator of the H2H: an RCP's force for conservation is written in their DNA- regionally focused and locally-grounded. It is work in and with diverse partnerships around shared priorities that is leading the way forward to meet our conservation challenges. And the best part is, there is plenty of room at the table and H2H is working with partners on engaging voices not yet heard and making room to expand our shared priorities with more community and environmental advocates.” - Katie Blake, Coordinator Hudson to Housatonic RCP

Lisa Hayden, Outreach Manager, New England Forestry Foundation

Christopher Riely, Forester and Conservationist, Sweet Birch Consulting and Co-Coordinator, Rhode Island Woodland Partnership

The Crucial Private Landowner Audience

The private owners of woodlands, farms and undeveloped land are a linchpin in determining the future of our landscapes. Through its two-state, multi-partner MassConn Woods initiative, New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) has road-tested targeted marketing tactics and messages to this critical audience over a 6-year period. NEFF’s November 2019 report, “ From Engagement to Action: Supporting Woodland Owners in Decisions about Their Land ” explores MassConn lessons that can be scaled up to reach and communicate with the 215,000 New England landowners of 10 or more acres who will be key partners in implementing natural solutions to climate change through conservation and land management.

At a 2018 RCP Network Gathering symposium, academic experts and outreach practitioners identified gaps in resources that could support RCPs in proactive, strategic landowner outreach. [See pages 11-12 of the NEFF Executive Summary for findings from this session, which helped to inform additional recommendations for investment in outreach capacity:  https://newenglandforestry.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/engagement-to-action-2019report-summary.pdf ]. We also want to hear from you regarding how RCPs can continue scaling up outreach tools to advance the Wildlands & Woodlands Vision for the long view. Bring your ideas and needs to the discussion!

Adapting Our Outreach to the New Reality

With the ongoing global pandemic, in-person peer learning events – which have proven very effective with landowners – have been challenging or downright impossible of late. Outreach practitioners are now experimenting with new digital tools, and in some cases reverting to old-school techniques of one-on-one communication and relationship-building. During our webinar, we’ll share some examples of what’s working and what’s not in this new world of virtual outreach. We'll discuss approaches for working with audiences of both professionals and landowners, with examples from the Women Owning Woodlands Network and projects focusing on increasing forest resiliency in a time of climate change and other stressors. For example, one technique is creating digital documents with clear messaging of technical topics that are easy to share: 

• Forest Stewards Guild’s  Oak Resilience Toolkit : 
•  https://foreststewardsguild.org/oak-resiliency/#OakToolkit 
• Forest Stewards Guild’s  Ten Recommendations for Managing Ash in the Face of Emerald Ash Borer and Climate Change : Created by well-respected local experts in managing ash in the face of EAB and climate change, it puts science into practical guidelines that foresters and landowners can follow.
•  https://foreststewardsguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ten-Recommendations-for-Managing-Ash.pdf 
• NEFF and Partners’ Invasive & Native Plant Story Map: Why Plant Choice Matters [link to become live in the coming week] 
• Women Owning Woodlands (WOW): This network engages and empowers women in land stewardship by connecting them with resources, trusted professionals, and a community of other women. The WOW professionals’ network of leaders across the country holds recurring calls on reimagining outreach in an era of social distancing, with insights to effectively engage women woodland owners despite constraints posed by the pandemic. 
• Women's Chainsaw Trainings in a COVID Context:  http://www.womenowningwoodlands.net/content/womens-chainsaw-trainings-covid-context 
• NEFF’s November 2019 report, From Engagement to Action:  https://newenglandforestry.org/connect/publications/from-engagement-to-action/ ”

• Dylan Jenkins, Vice President of Portfolio Development, Finite Carbon
• Caitlin Guthrie, Director of Forest Carbon Origination, Finite Carbon

We are at an unprecedented moment in history – the  best science  tells us that we have a decade to make a meaningful turnaround in climate change impacts, and to sustain the resilience of our communities, we must get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

Forestlands are essential to the solution in many ways. To name a few: 

• Maintaining and expanding forestlands with a carbon storage objective (a “natural climate solution”) sequesters additional carbon from the atmosphere
• Forest products, such as cross-laminated timber, can take the place of non-renewables, i.e. steel in skyscrapers
• Forests provide refuge for plants and animal climate refugees migrating to more suitable habitats.

With a few major exceptions, governments have struggled to enact meaningful policy changes to incentivize the de-carbonization of the economy in the necessary time frame. This has left a leadership void which major corporations are now navigating,  as one after the other , companies voluntarily pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, setting ambitious yet essential goals to meet the drastic cuts in emissions necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degree Celsius, as delineated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and pursuant to goals of the  Paris Agreement . New technologies and reductions in emissions can only go so far down the path to net zero, and carbon offsets (aka credits) can make up for any remaining greenhouse gas emissions. In carbon offset markets, buyers (often the above-referenced corporations) provide direct monetary payments to private landowners to implement practices that can be used to mitigate carbon emissions.

In the context of this rapidly de-carbonizing economy, forest landowners and their service providers are seeing a growing demand for forest carbon offsets. In New England, forests make up  80% of the total landscape , and are majority held in family or other private ownership, with an average size of 66 acres. These forest landowners have high interest in alternative and additional revenue streams. However, due to market access barriers including high project development costs, most landowners have been effectively blocked from participating in carbon offsets markets.

To overcome these challenges, Finite Carbon and partners are developing  innovative carbon offset solutions  for landowners between 40 and 4,000 acres to access this important revenue stream while enacting natural climate solutions.”

Louise Washer, President, Norwalk River Watershed Alliance and steering committee member for the Pollinator Pathway Northeast and Hudson to Housatonic RCP

The Pollinator Pathway was born out of the challenge: How to engage landowners? In 2017 Donna Merrill, of the Wilton CT Land Conservation Trust and a coordinator for the Hudson to Housatonic RCP (H2H), read about a group in Norway that had built a “bee highway” through Oslo by encouraging neighbors along a connected corridor to plant pollinator way-station gardens. She decided to try it here.

After a successful pilot project for H2H, Donna brought the idea of a Pollinator Pathway to her town of Wilton.  She met with volunteers from four conservation organizations—garden club, land trust, nature center, watershed association—and together they drew a future pathway on a map of the town. The pathway connected already-protected open space and important waterways.  The project launched with a talk at the Wilton Library and follow-up volunteer pollinator planting events on town open space. At these events, people learned the importance of native plants—their role in supporting local wildlife, birds and pollinators—and why that matters so much now. Those who showed up became the core team charged with spreading the word and building the pathway.  The model used there has now been replicated in over 100 towns across CT and NY and has beginner roots in PA, NJ, TN, SC, and OR.

The message is simple:

• Rethink Your Lawn
• Say No to Pesticides (and chemical fertilizers)
• Plant Native Plants

The challenges this project seeks to meet are:

• How to reach more people and begin a conversation about stewardship and land protection

• How to tackle the problems of habitat fragmentation, widespread use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, loss of plant biodiversity--“lawn-ification” of our landscape (40 million acres and climbing), planting of non-native ornamentals, invasive plant proble

The keys to its success:

• Charismatic character at the helm— butterflies! they open the door
• Local ownership—it’s a shared idea, not an organization, each town pathway looks different
•  Power of a network—connecting across town and state lines to create something much bigger and find new partners
• Open source shared resources—getting started is free and easy, no wheel-inventing needed

Pollinator Pathway website:  https://www.pollinator-pathway.org/ 

H2H website:  https://h2hrcp.org/about-h2h 

Regional press about the project:

• CT Magazine, August 2019:  https://www.connecticutmag.com/issues/features/people-across-connecticut-are-creating-a-pollinator-pathway-for-bees/article_0329e478-c29b-11e9-a904-2328392d59b1.html  
• Edible Nutmeg, April 2020:  https://ediblenutmeg.ediblecommunities.com/food-thought/pollinator-pathway-project  
•  Northern Woodlands, May2020:  https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/pollinator-pathways 

• Shelby Semmes, Northern New England Area Director, The Trust for Public Land

Community forests can serve as an economic development tool and a means of sustaining a forest-based economy. Successful approaches for establishing community forests include a discussion of the process, partnerships, and potential funding sources. There are diverse economic benefits that can result from the establishment of community forests, including those typical to New England (e.g., forestry) as well as less traditional benefits (e.g., ensuring water supply for agriculture and protecting cultural resources). In advocating for community forests, there are strategies to leverage this information to make the case for investments, build partnerships, and attract nontraditional advocates. Several case studies exemplify the economic benefits of community forests, including the Barre Town Forest in Vermont which was protected in 2012 and encompasses 384 acres. This forest has led to economic development for this area as it supports 20 jobs, $640,000 in spending, and attracts more than 10,000 visitors annually.

• Paige Dolci, Climate Resilience Coordinator at Mass Audubon
• Eric Walberg, Senior Program Leader, Climate Services, Manomet, Inc

Climate change is already having a profound impact on Massachusetts’ cities and towns, including increased flooding and hotter urban areas. Poorly planned or sprawling development reduces the capacity of the land to perform a wide range of valuable ecosystem services, including climate change mitigation (reducing greenhouse gases) and adaptation (increasing resilience in the face of unavoidable changes already underway). Though the value of nature is well-documented, concerns about the cost-effectiveness and practicality of nature over grey infrastructure remain, and nature-based solutions often involve multiple actions that cross jurisdictional boundaries.

Getting a community on board to protect natural areas and boost resilience can sometimes prove challenging, particularly when working at a landscape or watershed scale. The Resilient Taunton Watershed Network (RTWN) is focused on promoting the resiliency of the Taunton Watershed in the face of climate change and development, considering ecological outcomes as well as economic, social, and environmental justice concerns. Our session will use the work of RTWN as an example of bringing a watershed-based approach for resiliency planning to local decision making. To that end we are utilizing a regional green infrastructure analysis in reviewing local development controls and bylaws and making recommendations on how open space dedication at the local level can contribute to protection of a regional network.

Links:

•  Mass Audubon - Value of Nature 
•  SRPEDD - Resilient Taunton Watershed Network (RTWN) 
•  Mass Audubon – Bylaw Review 

• Leon David, Executive Director and Founder, Farmers Collaborative
• David Meshoulam, Executive Director, Speak for the Trees-Boston

Boston is a city rich in tradition with a long history of cherished public gardens and spaces. Yet, the distribution of green space and tree canopy is inequitable, with some neighborhoods below 10% tree canopy coverage and others nearing 50%. The city is also deeply segregated along racial and economic lines, with many communities of color having less access to resources such as green spaces and fresh produce.

HERO Hope Community Garden is a community-envisioned project begun as a serendipitous encounter between life-long residents, local nonprofit entrepreneurs, and well established national organizations and corporations. Community residents came together to transform a long-abandoned corner lot into a community forest: a space for healing, for fresh produce, for community gathering, for celebration, and cherishing nature. This garden now signifies resilience in its many forms: geographic resilience through the creation of a green space in what used to be an abandoned lot; psychological resilience of the human spirit and the ability of nature to heal and help overcome trauma; communal resilience to come together and build a better future, while honoring its many diverse presentations and honoring of history.

Through the process, the newly formed relationships faced challenges around issues of funding, building internal trust, external ambivalence from some residents, and competing visions of what the space could and should represent.

The grassroots process succeeded for 5 intersecting reasons:

1. Commitment of project visionaries
2. Connections of project leaders
3. Financial support from private industry
4. Nurturing a relationship of trust with city
5. Reflecting community pride and strengths and power of collaboration

Links:

•  A Legacy of Healing: Garden's roots were nurtured by grieving mom's sense of fate 
•  Hero Hope Garden on Geneva Avenue earns rave reviews 
•  Geneva Ave Tree Planting and Community Garden, October 2018 

Latha Swamy, Director, Food System Policy, City of New Haven, CT

New Haven is a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse coastal city in Connecticut. It has an estimated population of 130,250 that is roughly 33% Black or African American, 30.5% White, and 30.3% Hispanic/Latinx. New Haven has a long history of urban agriculture, with many of its community gardens starting in the 1980s.In recent years, it has witnessed the growth of a small and dynamic urban agricultural community. Despite these achievements, there are several municipal and systemic barriers that prevent urban agriculture from fully thriving in New Haven. These barriers include City processes that are opaque and cumbersome to navigate, non-existent and outdated zoning regulations and land-use policies, difficulty accessing knowledge and financial resources for urban agricultural initiatives, and a lack of authentic connections with Black, Brown, and low-income communities. These barriers cumulatively contribute to a variety of harms, including a lack of diverse representation in the mainstream urban agricultural community. Due to the lack of genuine community ownership of current initiatives and organizations, many communities are at risk of displacement and gentrification. These barriers and threats prevent Black and Brown communities from fully experiencing the socioeconomic, health, and environmental benefits that urban agriculture offers.

Prompted by strong advocacy from community food system advocates, the  City of New Haven’s Food System Policy Division  (FSPD), led by the Director of Food System Policy, was established in 2016. Currently, there are approximately only 25 other Food Policy Directors housed in municipal government throughout the United States. Therefore, New Haven has a unique opportunity to establish itself as a regional, national, and world leader in urban food policy, as it has already begun to do so. Historically, much of the food systems work in New Haven has focused on downstream solutions - such as issues around food access and the emergency food system. These programs function through a community service/charity model. Over the last two years, however, the FSPD has shifted from either/or thinking to a both/and approach. In addition to supporting programs that provide critical social safety nets (e.g. food pantries), the FSPD now also strongly focuses on addressing root causes and striving for systemic change (e.g. upstream solutions such as economic security and secure land ownership and access).

In response to these challenges and in line with the new mission - and as one of the first-ever recipients of the USDA Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Planning Grant - the FSPD is now developing the first New Haven Urban Agriculture Master Plan - an effective, responsive, transparent, fair, efficient, user-friendly, and predictable but flexible plan to access land and opportunities in order to support the production and sale of locally grown foods, build community, improve public health and well-being, and provide economic opportunity, particularly in areas that have vacant or underutilized land and low access to food. An inclusive, community-driven process will guide the development of this actionable master plan, and will build and expand upon work that the FSPD has already initiated. Informed by previous community feedback, and to focus efforts, the FSPD will prioritize three thematic pathways in the plan: 1) creating an equitable and enabling policy environment for urban agriculture in New Haven, 2) assessing the socio-economic viability of urban agriculture and its related businesses in New Haven, 3) and mobilizing resources for workforce development and training in urban agriculture and its related businesses. The New Haven Urban Agriculture Master Plan will eliminate long-standing regulatory, resource, and information barriers. It will provide a cohesive strategy to create transparent, easy-to-navigate City processes, to update zoning regulations and land-use policies, to improve access to knowledge and financial resources for urban agricultural initiatives, and to better connect with BIPOC and low-income communities. Ultimately, the City of New Haven wants all residents to equitably benefit from New Haven’s urban agricultural growth and development.

Story Maps link:  foodpolicy.newhavenct.gov  (this will go live by October 13)

Ryan Patch, Deputy Director, Water Quality Division at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets

Due to the initiative of three  farmer-led   watershed   coalitions , Vermont enacted  Act 83 of 2019  charging the  Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets  to convene a Working Group to discuss Soil Conservation Practices and Payment for Ecosystem Services.  This PES Working Group  focused not only on ecological services, but on the natural capital that provides these services, such as: healthy soil (“a soil carbon sponge”) that soaks up and filters water, functional landscapes, and biologically diverse ecosystems. This natural capital is the infrastructure needed for the provision of numerous goods and services that only healthy living systems can provide, such as: flood protection, clean water, food security, and climate resilience and mitigation.

The PES Working Group developed a collective view of the future and articulated it with a  vision statement :

The PES Working Group envisions a system in which farmers are hired to use their ingenuity and know-how in caring for the land to rebuild Vermont’s natural capital.

The PES Working Group aims to catalyze a paradigm shift in how farmers are acknowledged and empowered to perform their essential roles of environmental stewardship as well as providing food and fiber. The group envisions a future where farmers are recognized as land stewards, where they are compensated from numerous and diverse income streams for their provision of a range of ecosystem services, and where the public invests in the rebuilding and restoration of our state’s natural capital. This vision and subsequent goals come at a time when  Vermont agriculture is at a critical and urgent junction .

Current  state  and  federal  agricultural programs, including those focused on water quality, tend to pay for  discrete practices . A PES approach could take advantage of farmers’ ingenuity and know-how to regenerate natural capital and to achieve outcomes across a functional landscape in a host of more tailored, innovative, and effective ways. Vermont wants to be leader in rethinking both conservation and water quality programs, re-evaluating what farmers produce (not just crops, which are only one of many ecosystem services), and in creating additional income streams for farmers to invest in. For instance, would  insurers be willing to invest in a landscape that is far less likely to have flood losses ? Could town, state or federal funding for flood damage to roads be redirected towards creating  a working landscape that soaks up excess rainfall ? What entities might pay for  farming approaches that sequester carbon ?

In advancing a subset of the goals articulated by the PES Working Group, The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets is proud to announce the receipt of a  $7 million grant award from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)  that will enable the Agency to  launch a statewide Vermont Pay-for-Phosphorus (VPFP) Program  to further expand and support agriculture’s role in delivering clean water results for Vermont. The VPFP Program will use an innovative  ‘pay-for-performance’  approach to compensate farmers for voluntary and verified phosphorus load reductions in agricultural crop fields that exceed phosphorus reductions set by state and federal standards  on a farm-by-farm basis . This new and innovative program will build on the existing agricultural water quality clean-up framework and will accelerate the pace of implementation and clean water work occurring with farmers, partners, and the state.

• Mark Wamsley, Conservation & Stewardship Manager, Kestrel Land Trust
• Gabriella della Croce, Lead Organizer, Pioneer Valley Workers Center
• Lorena Moreno, Worker, Owner, and Sales Manager, Riquezas Del Campo  

In 2017, Kestrel Land Trust received a pristine 4-acre hayfield in Hatfield, MA—along with the offer to manage an additional 5 acres—in order to facilitate a larger land deal with a local municipality. The donation posed immediate management questions, as well as broader questions of why, and for whom, we conserve farmland. If farmland is a natural resource meant primarily for producing food, the idea of our land serving those who needed and could benefit most from that food was a compelling prospect. But we are not farm managers. So when Kestrel was asked by the Pioneer Valley Workers Center if several of their members—immigrants already working in the local food industry—could start a cooperative farm on the land, it began a learning process for all involved. For us, it is a new way of looking at land, how that land is woven into communities, and how we as a landowner in a position of power can most equitably support marginalized peoples.

Many of the members of the Pioneer Valley Workers Center were subsistence farmers in their home countries with combined decades of agricultural experience. This farmland provides an opportunity for those who grow and harvest the produce for the region to have access to healthy produce for themselves. The farm, Riquezes del Campo, is flourishing in its second season and providing thousands of pounds of produce to families throughout the Pioneer Valley.

Learn more about Pioneer Valley Workers Center and the Worker Coop Farm:

•  https://pvworkerscenter.org/coop-farm/ 
•  https://pvworkerscenter.org/food-justice/ 

•  https://www.gazettenet.com/CoOpFarm-hg-100520-36556823  
•  https://www.gazettenet.com/Pioneer-Valley-Workers-Center-to-create-cooperative-farm-in-Northampton-25578705  
•  https://www.kestreltrust.org/immigrant-farmers-dreams-take-root/ 

Overview: The day of the RCP Network Gathering will be an opportunity for interactive discussions between speakers, moderators, and audience members. The two keynote panels will focus on building resilient communities with an emphasis on farms, forest, and food security, as well as how landowners and municipalities can foster resilience in their own communities.

Agenda and At-A-Glance:

BUILDING RESILIENCE WITH FARMS, FOREST, AND FOOD SECURITY BY ADVANCING SOLUTIONS AT STATE AND REGIONAL LEVELS

Four speakers, representing agriculture, forestry, and food security activities at local to statewide scales in urban to rural landscapes will discuss resilience and the solutions that advance it. Other solutions identified in the previous weeks’ webinars and small break-out group brainstorms will focus panelists on state-scale policies and regional-scale strategies that would help cultivate deeper resilience in a more equitable way especially for communities historically excluded from opportunities.

Moderator: Greg Watson, Director For Policy and Systems Design, Schumacher Center for a New Economics

Speakers:

• Amanda Beal, Commissioner, Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry
• Patricia Spence, President, Urban Farming Institute of Boston
• Ellen Kahler, Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund
• Brian Donahue, Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies, Brandeis University, and Senior Fellow, Highstead 

THE ROLE OF LANDOWNERS AND MUNICIPALITIES IN CULTIVATING MORE RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

Informed with input from the landowner- and municipal-focused webinars’ insights, this conversation with a licensed professional forester, regional planning agency executive director, regional land conservation trust executive director, and RCP coordinator will tell us how they employ different strategies that help build resilience (social, economic, and ecological) at the landowner, municipal, and regional scales. Small-group brainstorm discussions will collect additional ideas on how RCPs, regional partners, and the RCP Network and other networks can help build resilience by working with landowners and municipalities in a coordinated and collaborative way.

Moderator: Dr. Elisabeth Hamin Infield, Professor of Regional Planning, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Speakers:

• Catherine Rawson, Executive Director, Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy
• Dennis D. McKenney, New Hampshire Licensed Professional Forester and Licensed Land Surveyor, New England Forestry Consultants, Inc.
• Erin Witham, Coordinator, Downeast Conservation Network
• Chris Campany, Executive Director, Windham Regional Commission

Conservation Finance Webinar, February 24, 2021

For more information and to register, please visit:  New England Conservation Finance Roundtable 

Story Map created by: Brian Hall, GIS Ecologist, Harvard Forest; Katie Blake, Conservationist, Highstead; and Kate Love, Conservation Intern, Highstead