New guide on Recommended Practices for Landscape Conservation Design highlights Connect the Connecticut

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Wondering how to develop, facilitate, or participate in a landscape conservation design (LCD) project? The new Recommended Practices for Landscape Conservation Design guide provides a road map for practitioners who are just venturing into this collaborative process based on lessons learned from landscape-scale projects across the country, including Connect the Connecticut.

The guide contains five sections covering major themes in landscape conservation design. Each section describes vetted practices, resources for more information, and presents a case study where the practices have been implemented. Connect the Connecticut and Nature’s Network – the landscape conservation design for the Northeast region that was built on the foundation laid by the Connecticut River pilot — are featured in a case study in Section 1 of the guide, which focuses on initiating a design process.

Federal grant of nearly $5M benefits Connecticut River watershed

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A new $4.98 million federal grant from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program will support projects in four states to improve water quality, wildlife habitat, and climate resilience in partnership with private landowners.

The projects were selected with guidance from Connect the Connecticut and other regional conservation tools to maximize their collective conservation impact in the watershed.

Listen to an interview with the director of The Nature Conservancy’s Connecticut River Program Kim Lutz about the grant program on WAMC.

Kestrel Land Trust acquires 161 acres of “core area” in Pelham, Mass.

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The Kestrel Land Trust and the Town of Pelham Conservation Commission have acquired a 161-acre parcel of land in Pelham, Mass., that will serve as a valuable natural asset for both people and wildlife. The Buffam Brook Community Forest, which lies within a high priority terrestrial “core area” in the Connect the Connecticut landscape conservation design, will be a publicly owned forest managed for the educational, recreational, and economic benefit of the community, thanks to collaboration with several private woodland owners.

While the project has been in the works since before the launch of Connect the Connecticut, Kestrel and partners applied the same data that underlies the landscape conservation design to make the case for acquiring the parcel. Kestrel’s Executive Director Kristin DeBoer explained that her organization used the Conservation Analysis Priority System (CAPS) developed by the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to demonstrate the ecological value of the land.

CAPS offers an ecosystem-based approach for assessing the ecological integrity of lands and waters, and identifying and prioritizing land in terms of conservation value, that was central to the development of Connect the Connecticut. The CAPS process results in an Index of Ecological Integrity (IEI) for each point in the landscape based on models constructed separately for each ecological community.Connect the Connecticut applied IEI rescaled to each ecosystem type in the watershed to select the most resilient and intact systems to be included in the network of priority areas.

As such, the land in Pelham represents an area that is capable of supporting biodiversity over time because it is a resilient example of high quality habitat. As only the second public forest of its kind in Massachusetts, it also represents a unique resource for the community.

Read more about this project on the Kestrel Land Trust website.

Connect the Connecticut provides guidances for sound investments to protect Long Island Sound

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Information from the landscape conservation design for the Connecticut River watershed is being used to identify candidate projects for a grant program focused on reducing runoff into Long Island Sound by protecting private forestlands threatened by development.

Habitat maps for a six bird species, including wood thrush, that were developed as part of the Connect the Connecticut project were used to determine eligibility for the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service Healthy Forest Reserve Program.

“This is the first time this program is being used for easements in New England or New York, so we are pioneers in helping to make sure it functions well here,” said Bill Labich, who chairs the Long Island Sound Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) on behalf of the Highstead Foundation.

Read the full story on the North Atlantic LCC website.

Audubon Connecticut uses Connect the Connecticut to make the case for conservation in Eightmile River watershed

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Audubon Connecticut has used data from the landscape conservation design to help justify funding a project as part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ In Lieu Fee program, established to support mitigation projects in the state to enhance and preserve aquatic habitats.

Read the full story on the North Atlantic LCC website.

FWS Director presents award to Connect the Connecticut leadership team

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At the annual Northeast region employee appreciation ceremony, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe presentedDan-Ashe_Gottschalk-Award the John S. Gottschalk Partnership Award to the group of Fish and Wildlife Service staff who were instrumental in leading the Connect the Connecticut landscape conservation design project. The award is presented to a group of employees who have demonstrated creativity and ingenuity in helping to implement a partnership initiative.

Read the full story on the North Atlantic LCC website.

Charting a course for the Connecticut River

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DSC03054Whether planning a canoe trip or a conservation project along the Connecticut River, it helps to look at the big picture. North Atlantic LCC Communications Coordinator Bridget Macdonald reflects on the importance of efforts that bring partners together to share responsibility for taking care of the things they value collectively, like Connect the Connecticut, in a feature on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Connecting the Nature of the Northeast” blog.

Read the blog post on Charting a course for the Connecticut River.

Mass Live calls Connect the Connecticut a “major conservation vision”

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NH-parks-&-recConnect the Connecticut is gaining attention for bringing large datasets and diverse partners together to achieve a shared vision. In a June 2016 news story, the No. 1 news source for Western Massachusetts called Connect the Connecticut a “major conservation vision” that will help partners across the four-state Connecticut River watershed “prioritize and coordinate land acquisition efforts” in the face of future change.

Read the story Big data informs big conservation vision in ‘Connect the Connecticut’ mapping project on MassLive.

Editorial calls Connect the Connecticut a “breakthrough”

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In an April editorial, the Hampshire Gazette praised the Connect the Connecticut project for bringing different groups involved in protecting the Connecticut River watershed onto the same page by pinpointing the places most in need of conservation.

Read the editorial, Data can aid conservation efforts, on the Daily Hampshire Gazette website.

Hampshire Gazette goes behind the scenes of Connect the Connecticut

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The Northampton, Mass., -based daily newspaper serving Hampshire and Franklin counties, featured the Connect the Connecticut project in a two-page spread for its April 2016 Environment section.

Reporter Fran Ryan spoke with several members of the project’s Core Team for the story, including Bill Labich of Highstead Foundation,  Patrick Comins of Connecticut Audubon, and Kim Lutz of The Nature Conservancy and Friends of the Silvio O. Conte National Wildlife Refuge.

Read the story, Using data to coordinate Connecticut River conservation, on the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s website.