Regional Conservation Partnership Network Storymap

By working together, we can conserve nature and serve communities through land protection, stewardship, and assist with community development efforts in unique ways that leverage our resources and scale up our collective impact.

The RCP Network enables RCPs and partners to collaborate to better leverage science, human capital, knowledge, and financial resources to broaden their impact. The RCP Network makes it easier for individual RCPs to connect, innovate, and implement shared visions together.

In total, RCPs have permanently protected over 450,000 acres of land throughout some of the more populated portions of New England and eastern New York. The creation of the Network in 2012 has acted as a catalyst helping to build the capacity of RCPs to accelerate the pace of land protection with its highly effective, collaborative approaches.

The RCP Network teamed up with the North East State Foresters Association to apply for funding from the US Forest Service Landscape Scale Restoration (LSR) Grant Program. After receiving funding, $320,000 of this grant was used to train state foresters, land conservation, and forestry groups how to reach out and engage with family forest owners in dialogues that would lead to more stewardship and conservation. The initiative developed three new interstate RCPs. Two remain today: Berkshire Taconic RCP and Southern New England Heritage Forest Partnership.

All participants were trained in "Tools for Engaging Landowners Effectively" which led to targeted outreach and more efficient engagement with landowners ready to take action. The initiative also spread best practices; peer-to-peer landowner learning was prioritized in place of expert-to-landowner education, and VT’s Foresters for the Birds program was shared with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Future leaders of the Hudson to Housatonic Conservation Initiative (2015-2016) were invited to the "Final Lessons Learned" workshop. These initiative leaders were mentored in applying for an LSR grant, and eventually received $210,000 to apply the same approaches mentioned above in suburban and exurban landscapes.

All these efforts led to the formation of the Hudson to Housatonic RCP.

 Click here to see a copy of the NY-NE Family Forest Owner Outreach Initiative. 

Between 2013-2017, Highstead worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the Open Space Institute to train RCPs on how to use The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) Terrestrial Resilience data alongside strategic conservation mapping. This work done on behalf of the RCP Network put five RCPs in receipt of hands-on training and support, as well as providing many other RCPs with training on how to access TNC's data and other spatial data online. RCPs commonly use the TNC data layer to prioritize their conservation investments on vegetated lands most resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Thanks to the establishment of the RCP Network and Highstead’s published research on RCP success, the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust selected the RCP Network as the recipient of one of its final gifts.

With this grant funding, thirteen RCPs received $20,000 to support innovative conservation planning, communication efforts, and spatial data collection. Additionally, eight RCPs received between $75,000 to $100,000 to help pay for appraisals, title searches, etc. of discounted conservation easements (including donations of value by landowners).

The $775,000 of total funding was critical in support of the protection of nearly 38,000 acres in 136 parcels. Soon afterwards, two RCPs raised an additional $930,000 to replenish spent funds to conserve another 78,000 acres.

 You can click here for more information. 

With the help of $10M awarded in federal funding, the RCP Network was able to be a primary partner in this first-generation program. This funding was to be used to protect and steward farm and forestland and plant riparian buffers. Highstead, on behalf of the RCP Network, convened a forest land protection technical committee, administering funding requests totaling $3.25M and protecting 1000 acres in five parcels in Vermont and Rhode Island.

Even though this failed to meet acreage targets, the program paved the way for and assisted with other RCPP applications as well, including: Southern New England Heritage Forest Partnership ($6M); CT Watershed RCPP ($4M); Uplands to Lowlands RCPP ($6M) and the Arizona Land and Water Trusts RCPP (5.9M). The RCP Network was also able to devise an innovative method for raising $6.4M in the form of easements from across the LI Sound Watershed.

 You can click here for more information. 

• Counter and prepare for the effects of climate change;
• Ensure all people have healthy parks and trail systems to enjoy;
• Protect our water supplies and other natural resources;
• Preserve nature for people and wildlife; and
• Sustain land-dependent jobs.

RCPs, their history, and to access relevant resources click  here .

How to help grow and support an RCP, access the   RCP Handbook   to learn more.

Engaging with other RCPs, join the   RCP Network. 

The NBHCI team has created an easy-to-use,  interactive mapping tool  designed to help RCPs, land trusts, and practitioners with their work of developing habitat management and stewardship plans, prioritizing land for conservation, and in strategizing landowner and community engagement, all through the lens of bird conservation.

NATLP serves as a model for implementing landscape conservation of the Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership (ATLP) via subregional partnerships. The RCP's that make up NATLP have contributed to each other by sharing visions, goals, a strategic conservation map and action plan, and a multi-level governance structure. Without this teamwork, the dedication and development of shared goals would have much slower and smaller impact. These activities have inspired the larger-scale ATLP to follow suit with their own mapping and planning activities.

NATLP is also a central advisor to the successful multi-RCP conservation initiative that occurs in the southern third of its region, the Uplands to Lowlands initiative.

The forests of the eastern United States cover 926,000 square miles: an area far greater than those of the American West. Scientists consider this the most intact temperate deciduous and mixed forest region on Earth.

In the middle of this world-renowned resource, Follow the Forest seeks to protect and connect these core forests, which are the largest intact woodland areas in this region of increasing development. Core forests filter air and water while also providing important habitats for wildlife; linking Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills to the Green Mountains of Vermont. However, the threat of forests being disconnected through fragmentation and changing land use persists even as we recognize the global importance of this resource. The pace and impact of forest loss is not linear. Without strategic vision and protection, individual core forests will dwindle and ultimately erode the ecological integrity of eastern New York and New England.