Workshop Reflections: Stephanie Toothman

Click Here to Watch Workshop reflections from Stephanie Toothman, 

Associate Director, Cultural Resources

Workshop Reflections: Dan Kimball

Click Here to watch Workshop Reflections from Dan Kimball,

Superintendent of Everglades National Park and Champion of Call to Action #22 Scaling Up

Sect. of the Interior Sally Jewell talks about Landscape Scale Collaboration

Secretary Sally Jewell shared her perspective on the importance of large landscape scale collaboration at a visit to the National Conservation Training Center during the Scaling Up Workshop.

Click Here for Sect. Jewell's Video

Case Study: Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation

Presented by Shawn Johnson, Center for Natural Resources & Environmental Policy, The University of Montana

The Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation was launched in May 2011 as an alliance of individuals and organizations engaged in leading, managing, researching, advocating, funding, educating, or setting policy to advance large landscape conservation initiatives.  This case study will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the Network’s structure, work plan, accomplishments, and lessons learned to date.  It will also explore the Network’s niche role in promoting and advancing large landscape conservation.

Build capacity for large landscape conservation at various scales and across sectors.

• Build awareness and understanding of the diversity of approaches to catalyze, enable, and sustain large landscape conservation initiatives.
• Help conservation initiatives develop skills, acquire tools, share best practices, create opportunities for shared funding, build necessary staffing, and share scientific and other expertise.
• Help develop key measures of success for conservation initiatives, and establish methods to monitor.
• Document and evaluate what is/is not working.

Link existing and emerging large landscape conservation initiatives.

• Share experiences and learn from one another.
• Examine models for collaboration and innovative governance arrangements
• Strengthen linkages among initiatives to provide the building blocks for coordination and integration of these separate conservation efforts.
• Interact with other practitioners, landowners, community leaders, government agencies, universities, foundations, and non-governmental organizations.

Promote and support large landscape conservation initiatives.

• Promote innovation by linking science, practice, funding, and policy.
• Advocate for funding and support at the international, national, and regional level.
• Set goals to promote the funding, management, and planning of large landscape conservation initiatives as contrasted to the pursuit of scattered, unconnected conservation efforts (“random acts of conservation”).
• Harness private market resources under the umbrella of large landscapes; link them to rural economic development.
• Provide conservation initiative leaders with the skills and tools needed to convene diverse people across political and jurisdictional boundaries, mobilize and engage private landowners and the business community, formulate and assess future scenarios and goals, integrate best available ecological, economic and social science, generate sustained funding, identify desired conservation outcomes, and monitor and evaluate progress.

View Shawn's powerpoint slides HERE

Workshop Reflections: Lynn Scarlet

Lynn Scarlet, Environmental Policy Analyst - TNC

Click Here for Video

Getting Results by Initiating, Growing and Sustaining Communities of Practice

Pat Conway, Chief Knowledge Officer, US Army Combined Arms Support Command, provided the featured presentation at the Scaling Up engagement workshop. 

Want to engage your workforce, stakeholders and customers to accelerate peer-to-peer collaboration, stimulate the flow of ideas, and harvest innovation?  Are you faced with the challenges of geographic dispersion, functional silos, and traditional command/control hierarchies? Perhaps Communities of Practice (CoPs) are the answer, but it's important to "deep dive" into how CoPs work and what needs to be done to ensure they support your strategic objectives.  Here are some of the key takeaways from this session:

- Recognizing the strengths and challenges of Communities of Practice (CoP)
- Understanding and Capitalizing on CoP Diversity
- Optimizing the CoP Technology "Tool Box"
- Solidifying Purpose, Structure, Roles and Responsibilities
- Weaving CoPs into the Fabric of the Strategic Plan"

Large Landscape Scale Conservation & Collaboration- Jesse Littlewood

Jesse Littlewood, a digital strategist with EchoDitto (http://www.echoditto.com), shares why he thinks large landscape scale conservation is a natural fit for collaboration and engagement across boundaries and with the public.

Click for Jesse Littlewood Video

Why Scaling Up? Why Now?- Woody Smeck

Woody Smeck, Superintendent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, shares why he thinks large landscape scale conservation and collaboration are important for the NPS and partners.

 

Click for Woody Smeck Video

Bright Spots and Barriers -- What are Yours?

Right now, the group is exploring the NPS culture around large landscape scale conservation.  We're framing it in terms of bright spots/opportunities that we can build-on, and barriers/concerns that we need to break-down.

What do you think are some of the strengths of the NPS and our partner networks in engaging in large landscape work? What are some of the barriers you face in advancing large landscape efforts?

Ideas from this morning's discussion

Why Scaling Up - and why now? What is different from 20-30 years ago?
Below are some of the reports from this morning's discussions. What ideas do have to add to the growing list?

• Greater pressure on all lands because increasing numbers of people - we have to do things differently
• Reaching a critical mass - climate change, population, development/pressures around parks - wake up call to do things differently
• We have matured as a profession - we are in a better frame of mind - coming from islands of hope to thinking outside of the islands
• Modern parks have been built by government and partners; need to look at them in a more non-traditional way
• The Appalachian Trail is first large landscape conservation initiative; what is different today is that we are at a change point - these early experiments have developed good models that demonstrate successful ways to work differently
• Critically important to the financial and political crisis that we are in; being able to look at partners to combine resources to keep projects going
• Risks are greater understood now -- fragmentation, population, invasives -- cumulative impact of the issues
• Web gives us greater opportunity now to disseminate information and engage more audiences - and to organize differently
• Increased awareness by the public for the need/interest/idea of large landscape conservation - and that we need to be a part of this
• The administration supports it

 

 

We Want to Hear from You! Why Scaling Up, Why Now?

We would have loved to see everyone with an interest in large landscape conservation in the National Park Service join us for this workshop; but that is of course not possible.  This blog is our effort to share some of the discussions that are evolving in the next three days, and hear from you. Please share your thoughts, ideas and reactions in the comment sections of the various posts.  Throughout the day, we will report out what we’re hearing from our virtual participants to make sure your voices and great thinking are part of the conversation.

The group is discussing why this work is so important to the NPS today.  Here's the question:

We are standing on a body of work accomplished by NPS and partners over the past decades.  What is different about the imperative and opportunities of this work today?  

So, what do you think: Why Scaling Up, Why Now?

Scaling Up 101 -- The Vision and Charge

To kick off the workshop, the strategists met on-line to get the full update on the Scaling Up charge and current priorities, to preview the Scaling Up toolkit, and hear about building communities of practice.  A similar webinar was held for everyone interested in Scaling Up work.  Have you listened to Scaling Up 101 webinar yet?  No?  You can now…check out this recorded Webex to hear about all of the great efforts of the Scaling Up group to date, and the goals of creating a “big tent” for everyone interested in large landscape efforts to come together to make this work a priority for the National Park Service.

Scaling Up 101 Webinar

What excites you or inspires you about the Scaling Up charge and vision?

Welcome from Dan Kimball, Champion of Scaling Up!

For the last year, a dedicated group of National Park Service (NPS) staff from parks, regional offices, and national programs have been leading the efforts of Call to Action #22, “Scaling Up.”  As the NPS carries out its mission to protect and preserve our natural and cultural resources and provide for visitor enjoyment, we must include large landscape conservation as part of our broader strategy.

Many efforts to date have led to greater understanding and advocacy for large landscape scale conservation. The Scaling Up Team’s goal is to expand the conversation about the value of these efforts and successful models for collaborative conservation— in all levels of the organization and across a multitude of programs and disciplines—and it needs to include the great array of partners dedicated to this type of work as well.

To start that process, over the coming week we will hold a strategy session with a small, diverse group of NPS large landscape practitioners and partners to draft an engagement framework. Participants will be challenged to think broadly about cultural change within the NPS around issues of large landscape conservation, and consider an approach that moves people from ideas to strategies to implementation.  

We invite you to join us in the conversations.  Throughout the workshop, we will be posting updates on this Blog site. We hope that you will join the discussion, adding your ideas and contributing to the creation of a community of practice dedicated to advancing this work.  

Action #22

TO PRESERVE AMERICA’S SPECIAL PLACES IN THE NEXT CENTURY, THE NPS must 

MANAGE the natural and cultural resources of the National Park System to increase resilience in the face of climate change and other stressors. 

CULTIVATE excellence in science and scholarship as a foundation for park planning, policy, decision making, and education. 

ACHIEVE a standard of excellence in cultural and natural resource stewardship that serves as a model throughout the world. 

COLLABORATE with other land managers and partners to create, restore, and maintain landscape-scale connectivity. 

TO ACHIEVE THESE GOALS BY 2016, the National Park Service will: 

Promote large landscape conservation to support healthy ecosystems and cultural resources. To achieve this goal we will protect continuous corridors in five geographic regions through voluntary partnerships across public and private lands and waters, and by targeting a portion of the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to make strategic land acquisitions within national parks. 

A Call to Action: Preparing for a Second Century of Stewardship and Engagement. August 23, 2013