Big Partnerships for Big Impact

March 12, 2021

by Tom Gardali, Group Director, Pacific Coast and Central Valley Group

Conservation is challenging. But partnerships make it possible.

The California Landscape Conservation Partnership (LCP) is an alliance of public and private land managers, scientists, and interested groups committed to solving natural resource challenges that are too large or complex for any single entity to undertake alone. Given that the LCP’s geographic scope includes the entire state of California–all 160,000 square miles of it, from the mountains to the sea, and from densely populated to rarely visited–that ends up including many, many challenges. The official mission of the LCP is “to foster integrated land and seascape conservation and climate adaptation strategies to benefit California’s exceptional biodiversity and human communities.” With many conservation efforts rightfully focused on project-level concerns, the LCP fills an important role by looking across projects and regions to collectively identify the barriers and solutions to implementing conservation across the state.

The LCP recently completed a five year strategic plan that takes an innovative approach to conserving California’s superlative biodiversity. It does so in two important ways. First, the plan acknowledges the many existing, new, and emerging conservation initiatives in California and aims to add value to these efforts by expliciting focusing on relationships under the assumption that building new and strengthening existing ones will result in a conservation community that is a durable and resilient force for conservation. Second, and like others in the state, the LCP is focusing on conserving biodiversity in a changing climate. However, the LCP is also explicit about the need to include additional societal benefits such as human health – a concept the LCP refers to as “Biodiversity+.”

Here are some of the ways the LCP aims to support conservation in California through the lens of Biodiversty + and relationship building:

• Enable and promote science that supports biodiversity conservation
• Contribute to making conservation more inclusive
• Work toward diverse communities having equitable say and benefits from conservation outcomes
• Advance innovative climate-informed management, restoration, and protection strategies that achieve conservation of biodiversity, water, landscape connectivity, ecosystem services, and wildfire into the future
• Value traditional ecological knowledge and expertise of indigenous communities

Point Blue is a dedicated partner to the LCP and we are proud to have had a leadership role in developing this new and exciting strategic plan. We look forward to continuing to support the LCP in the years ahead as we continue to advance conservation in this great and beautiful state we all share.

Please let me know if you would like more information and/or would like to get involved in this important effort to strengthen, diversify, and expand conservation for all Californians: tgardali[at]pointblue.org.