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Our Conservation Program & Activities - Connecting the Various Scales of Conservation

There are more than 140 large landscape efforts in North America, and CLLC has been at the vanguard of this growing conservation work. Within North America, CLLC is working with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the University of Montana, Harvard Forest, the Regional Plan Association and the Sonoran Institute to create a Network of Large Landscape Practitioners. This effort seeks to build capacity, leverage resources and influence new policy for North America’s large landscape conservation community. Forty-one landscape efforts are already engaged, and we anticipate over 200 landscape members. A similar effort by the Lincoln Institute in 1988 led to the creation of the Land Trust Alliance, which helped elevate the impact of the Land Trust community.

In early 2011, CLLC played a key role in assisting the White House Council on Environmental Quality to advance large landscape conservation policy through America’s Great Outdoors initiative and was honored to be invited to the White House for the official release of President Obama’s hallmark conservation program. CLLC has played a critical role representing Montana in the recent development of President Obama's America's Great Outdoors effort.

In 2007, CLLC played a significant role in helping to catalyze the Western Governors Association's Wildlife Corridors Initiative, which has transformed state action on wildlife corridor and connectivity conservation. Connectivity conservation is considered by the conservation science community to be one of the most important management actions to facilitate species' responses to climate change. Eighteen western states unanimously approved a west wide framework for wildlife corridor conservation and are now mapping their crucial habitats and seeking to use the analyses to inform federal, state, local and private decisions.

Nearly 29 million acres of land have been conserved through Y2Y's collective efforts. For the past three years, CLLC has played a key role in helping the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative develop a regional climate adaptation strategic framework in a report "Moving Toward Climate Change Adaptation: The Promise of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative for Addressing the Region’s Vulnerability to Climate Disruption". Y2Y funds CLLC to link climate adaptation leaders in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, the Central Canadian Rocky Mountain Ecosystem (Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay National Parks) and the Y2Y Boreal Region, in an effort to connect US and Canadian climate adaptation efforts.

CLLC is fortunate to be part of the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative's (GNLCC) advisory team. The Great Northern LCC brings together federal agencies, five states and two Canadian provinces to promote landscape conservation and protect ecosystem services. The GNLCC plays a critical role in advancing climate adaptation science and practice from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest to the Northern Rocky Mountain region in Alberta and British Columbia.

The High Divide, (the continental divide between Idaho and Montana) is a vital wildlife corridor between Yellowstone National Park and the Central Idaho Wildlands. This landscape is increasingly bisected by transportation, energy, private land and recreation developments that risk severing existing wildlife connectivity and corridors. The High Divide is receiving increased attention from state and federal wildlife agencies and has been a pilot project for Idaho and Montana within the Western Governors’ Association’s Wildlife Corridors Initiative and the GNLCC. We are helping to link these two efforts.

CLLC is helping to co-direct the Roundtable for the Crown of the Continent, in partnership with the University of Montana's Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy. The Crown of the Continent is the trans-boundary ecosystem surrounding Waterton and Glacier International Peace Parks. Over the next three to six years, CLLC, in conjunction with the University of Montana, will facilitate a Kresge Foundation-led effort to foster local ecosystem service and climate adaptation efforts in the Crown of the Continent ecosystem. We are working with community-based groups, First Nations and Native American communities, conservationists and various government actors in the Crown to connect these diverse community efforts and address ecosystem-wide conservation challenges. These efforts ultimately will help sustain rural livelihoods, while improving the ecological integrity of the region.

CLLC seeks to address the intersection between the migratory needs of wildlife and the movement of people, goods and services on our nation’s busy roads. Highways are one of the greatest barriers to historic wildlife movement throughout the Rocky Mountain West. We seek to ensure that good science drives transportation planning and highway construction, wildlife mitigation, and reconstruction projects – before it is too late. The project will empower local communities to have a greater say in how transportation projects are designed so that wildlife values are protected.

Large landscape conservation is being adopted globally as a climate adaptation approach. CLLC is working to network large landscape initiatives in Africa, Asia and Australia. CLLC is a key resource for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's specialist group on mountain ecosystems. Through this network, we are connecting landscape practitioners to address climate adaptation, ecological connectivity and ecosystem service strategies.