Highstead is an active partner in collaborations at different scales. Each collaboration engages individuals from public and private agencies, institutions and organizations in the conservation and restoration of significant forest landscapes and the ecosystems they contain.
Priority resources include large blocks of contiguous forest and rare species habitat often spanning political boundaries.
A select set of these collaborations:
Watershed
The The Saugatuck River Watershed Partnership is a project of The Nature Conservancy. The goal of the Partnership is "to protect and enhance the health of the watershed by working collaboratively to link, maintain and restore habitats which support healthy populations representing the natural biological diversity of the watershed system."
The Partnership includes The Nature Conservancy, Aquarion Water Company, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, the Norwalk River Watershed Association, municipalities, environmental restoration groups, garden clubs, Highstead, and concerned citizens. A series of conservation planning conferences and grant-funded projects resulted in a focus on the connectivity and ecological integrity of the main stem and its tributaries.
Please contact Sally Harold at sharold@TNC.ORG for more information.
Regional Landscape
The North Quabbin Regional Landscape Partnership (NQRLP) was established in 1998 with a mission "to work together to identify, protect, and enhance strategic ecological, cultural, and historic open space within the rural landscape of the greater North Quabbin region of Massachusetts."
The Partnership is a voluntary association of town board members, landowners, state and federal conservation agencies, non-profit land trusts, regional planning organizations, and academic institutions.
Some of its recent successes:
- Sponsored the first bi-state Forest Legacy Application in the country and submitted the top-ranked application in the nation two years previously;
- Assisted three Partnership towns to pass the Community Preservation Act (CPA) (local taxes in their towns that leverage a state match for conservation, affordable housing, and historic preservation) bringing in $250,000 in new funds available to use for conservation this year; and,
- Helped to conserve 1,552 acres worth $3.5 million with another 4,414 acres worth over $8 million in upcoming years.
Please contact Jay Rasku, NQRLP Coordinator at info@nqqrpartnership.org for more information.
Multi-State
Massachusetts Wildlands and Woodlands Partnership
The Massachusetts Wildlands and Woodlands Partnership is an informal collaboration of conservationists implementing the Wildlands and Woodlands Vision through their own work, and through collaborations with other members.
The Vision
To stem the loss of forestlands due to sprawl, scientists from Harvard Forest and the University of Massachusetts among others, developed a bold Vision:
- To protect half of the remaining undeveloped forestland acres
- To create large reserves or wildlands on mostly public lands
- To protect privately owned woodlands
- To foster the establishment of new conservation collaborations or to increase the capacity of existing organizations to act as sources of information for private landowners and as land conservation project catalysts
The Partnership Makes it Real
To implement such a bold vision in Massachusetts and elsewhere in southern New England, sixty conservationists from Massachusetts and recently, from Connecticut, have joined forces in innovative ways:
To get more land protected, to influence funding for land protection, and to foster on-the-ground, on-going conservation collaborations and partnerships in the service of private land conservation and stewardship.
The Wildlands and Woodlands Partnership meets bimonthly at Harvard Forest in Petersham, MA.
Please contact Bill Labich, W&W Partnership Coordinator at blabich@highstead.net for more information.
Quabbin to Cardigan Mt. Conservation Collaborative (Q2C)
Q2C is a regional landscape planning and conservation partnership of public and private conservation agencies and organizations as well as regional planning agencies from New Hamphire and Massachusetts seeking to protect a broad corridor of interconnected conservation lands along the Monadnock Highlands.
Stretching more than 100 miles from the Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts to New Hampshire's Mt. Cardigan and beyond into the White Mountains, the region contains one of the largest remaining areas of intact contiguous forest in central New England, but intense new pressures threaten this unique landscape.
The Q2C has developed a set of priority focus area through a comprehensive analysis using geographic information systems (GIS) mapping overseen by a Steering Committee (http://www.spnhf.org/pdf/q2c-fact-sheet.pdf).
Please contact Chris Wells, Q2C Coordinator for more information at cwells@forestsociety.org.
