Private Lands Conservation Network

A Unique Opportunity

Conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote that trying to accomplish conservation entirely on public land was like trying to keep dry with only half an umbrella. Efforts to conserve America’s natural heritage are often focused on public lands. However, 70% of the conterminous U.S. is in private ownership, and many of these lands are geographically situated such that they could serve as crucial steppingstones or connections between conserved public lands.

Adjusting traditional management to conservation-focused management practices on large private properties will be key to creating connected networks of habitats, and sustainable, healthy landscapes. Importantly, it is well documented that lands of strong ecological health engender economic health for the human communities associated with those lands. Land trusts have done a great deal to protect private lands through acquisition or conservation easements. However, there are few organized efforts to encourage landowners to voluntarily commit to conservation without easements or sale of their land. Such a commitment is possible without the policy and legal burdens entailed in the conservation of public lands, and without landowners having to place restrictions on the use of their lands.

The Vision

For many of us, our lands are like family, and we want to know they are full of vitality. But the West's natural beauty and wildlife are facing ever-increasing challenges in addition to sprawl and other direct modification of the land. Sudden aspen decline, forest insect outbreaks, degradation of water quality, declines in species diversity, and many other problems are rapidly altering the western landscape. We want to ensure that our lands remain healthy and resilient to these challenges.

Private lands in the West will provide as many acres of healthy wildlife habitat as are found in the total acreage of the federal parklands system. This network of private conservation lands will be based on voluntary actions of landowners who care about the health of their lands and the wildlife that roam on them. These landowners will peacefully coexist with the full range of species, including carnivores. If enough landowners take action, together we will make a significant contribution to the conservation of the North American West and the landscapes, livelihoods, and open space that make it so globally unique.

A Private Lands Conservation Network

Our goal is to establish an organized network of landowners who voluntarily work together to foster environmentally responsible and sustainable resource management, to assure the long-term health of landscapes and wildlife populations. We embrace a model of sustainability that, using public-private lands partnerships, restores degraded habitat and biological diversity; ensures long-term conservation of critical open space; and preserves the ranching heritage while engaging in mixed-use enterprises that viably support our broader caretaker and legacy goals. The result will be millions of acres under private conservation stewardship, which together create a large-scale, intact western landscape. Connectivity of the landscape will be greatly increased, and wolves, wolverines, grizzly bears, and other threatened species will once again have room to roam. Through careful land use planning and new predator conflict avoidance techniques, these species will coexist with working lands.

The Network will bring together a community of scientists, corporate and non-profit partners, educators, students, and everyday citizens to find creative ways to contribute to private lands conservation. In doing so we are recognizing the social dimension of conservation and building networks of relationships among diverse groups for mutual benefit.

 Benefits of Participation

The Private Lands Conservation Network will provide a forum in which landowners can share best practices and learned lessons from their efforts to improve land management, whether it concerns fire, timber, grazing, energy, predators, insects and invasive weeds, wildlife, or water resources. Participants will benefit from sharing knowledge about land management tools and funding opportunities for land conservation, via federal and state incentive programs.

Landowners wanting to join the Network will be asked to agree to a set of science-based management recommendations for habitat and watershed restoration, and wildlife habitat improvements, as relevant to their operations and property. Participating lands can receive public acknowledgement and recognition for their efforts, through media and web-based promotion by the Network.

As the Network becomes operational and enjoys success, we intend to develop partnerships with natural resource organizations and agencies that can provide on-site assistance for landowners as they strive to achieve ecologically and economically sound management objectives.

Together we will inspire landowners around the West who are concerned with the future of their lands to join in doing our part to keep the West whole. The Private Lands Conservation Network is an opportunity for landowners to be recognized for their role in contributing to keeping the West the land of freedom, open space, natural splendor, and prosperous working lands.

We are looking for landowners with vision. For more information, contact Kenyon Fields, Strategy Director at Wildlands Network: Kenyon@wildlandsnetwork.org