The people behind Connect the Connecticut
For more than a year, a team of conservation partners representing non-governmental organizations and state and federal agencies working at various scales throughout the region met monthly to pilot an innovative approach to conservation: a landscape conservation design for the Connecticut River watershed that reflects shared goals, and incorporates the best available science and information.
“Every attempt was made to have right people in the room, to hear what was said, and to document all of the decisions that were being made,” said Kim Lutz, Connecticut River Program Director for The Nature Conservancy. “The process was outstanding.”
Facilitated by the North Atlantic LCC and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Core Team of partners dedicated time, expertise, and resources from their organizations to help craft a vision for the future of the watershed that could support fish, wildlife, and natural processes, as well as recreation and sustainable economic development for human communities, in the face of land-use pressure and climate change.
The partners used a range of datasets for terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic systems to create the design, which was based upon a modeling framework developed by the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project at the University of Massachusetts. All of these tools are available on the Data & Tools page.
More than just a blueprint to work towards a connected conservation landscape, the members of the Core Team came away with the necessary ties for building a stronger network of conservation partners:
“You gain so much by connecting with people who have different expertise than you do, and learning about the potential roles that agencies and organization can play,” said Bill Labich, Regional Conservationist for the Highstead Foundation.
“It’s about building relationships between people, and by extension, organizations and agencies, but towards getting work done,” he said. “We have the design, now what can we do with it? We couldn’t ask that before.”
What are the goals of the project?
The development of a landscape conservation design for the Connecticut River watershed was driven by two overarching goals agreed upon by the partnership:
To sustain a diverse suite of intact, connected, and resilient ecosystems that provide important ecological functions and services that benefit society, such as clean water, flood protection, and lands for farming, forestry, and recreation.
To sustain healthy and diverse populations of fish, wildlife, and plant species for the continuing benefit and enjoyment of the public.