The purpose of Highstead's Regional Conservation Program is to help people sustain wooded landscapes across southern New England and eastern New York by fostering collaboration among diverse organizations and often across political boundaries. Highstead initiated its Regional Conservation Program because:
- Forests serve as our region's green infrastructure
- Achieving the Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) Vision is about re-thinking conservation
- Conservation organizations are focused by nature
- Achieving bold conservation visions like W&W requires collaboration
Forests Serve as Our Region's Green Infrastructure
Viewing New England from "space" using Google Earth, the green is unmistakable. As one zooms in closer though, especially in the southern regions, the dominant land use pattern becomes clearer: networks of linked patches of residential and commercial development are connected by roadways surrounding islands of green and tan, the forests and fields remaining. It is these forests both big and small, in large blocks and along rivers, in cities and suburbs, and in the hills and around farms that generate health and vibrancy for our communities.
Forests are critical to our way of life. They always have been. Only now, society is beginning to recognize the bounty that our wooded landscapes generate, especially with regards to drinking water supplies and air pollution. As taxpayers, we often respond positively to the call to support investments that sustain wastewater treatment, highway maintenance, and drinking water filtration capacity. We see these services as necessary. Rarely have we been challenged to make payments supporting the land's capacity to deliver clean air and water. But times are a changing. With the growing awareness of climate change and of the ways in which we hope to reduce those impacts, more and more we are valuing how trees and forests contribute to our well-being.
Forests serve as our region's green infrastructure. Forests provide us with timber, fuel, food, oxygen and medicine; they control erosion, sequester carbon, and clean the air we breathe and the water we drink; they provide natural habitats for native fauna and flora; and they offer us opportunities for recreation and spiritual enrichment. Forests are the infrastructure we cannot live without.
Achieving the Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) Vision is About Re-Thinking Conservation
In 2004, scientists from Harvard University’s Harvard Forest developed a conservation vision report entitled Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) . This vision calls for the protection of more than half of the greater New England region in a combination of Woodlands (forests sustainably managed for multiple forest products and values) and Wildlands (forest that is shaped by natural disturbance regimes).
The W&W vision report documents the tremendous value of forests. It says that thanks to sprawling development, we are in the midst of a second "hard" deforestation from which forests won't soon recover. Implementation of the vision requires a grassroots, bottom-up approach, argues the authors, and one which must reach out to landowners and others invested in the long-term care of the land.
Once Highstead learned of the vision, it became a strong supporter. The Highstead Board soon thereafter developed its Regional Conservation program. The purpose of the program is to promote the conservation and stewardship of wooded landscapes across southern New England and eastern New York by fostering collaboration among many different organizations.
Conservation Organizations are Focused by Nature
Our region is home to hundreds of conservation land trusts and environmental groups that work to protect the environment and conserve forested landscapes and other natural resources. Time, staffing, and funding constraints encourage most land conservation trusts and other environmental organizations to focus on specific geographic areas, programs, and land protection strategies. Opportunities to collaborate across political boundaries occur on a case by case basis and not necessarily by design. Forests and their services cross political boundaries. Strategies for their conservation must do the same.
Achieving Bold Conservation Visions like W&W Requires Collaboration
Highstead's Regional Conservation program seeks to build on the region's legacy of environmental stewardship and on the growing acceptance of collaboration as key to future conservation gains. Our approach centers on supporting the propagation of successful models of collaboration like the regional conservation partnership through research, outreach, and information-sharing among experienced practitioners both professionals and volunteers.
