The 2025 RCP Network Gathering features two dozen sessions led by nearly 60 presenters along five integrated health themes: Physical and Mental Well-being, Listening and Connecting, Resilient Ecosystems, Integrated Land Use, and Diverse Partnerships.
* Presentations focused on tools, lessons, and practices to strengthen partnership leadership, planning, and participation
Session A – 10:45 AM to 12 PM
Massachusetts is facing a housing crisis, and it could appear as a direct threat to land conservation efforts. Everyone needs a place to live; however, municipalities are continuing to uphold the legacy of redlining and its negative impact to environmental justice population’s financial, mental, and physical health with single family zoning. This presentation looks at single family zoning that abuts greenspaces owned by the Massachusetts Department Conservation and Recreation or a municipality, the lack of access to public transportation to these sites, and potential solutions for eliminating the adventure gap for environmental justice communities.
Speaker: Darren Josey, First Seed Sown Sales and Marketing
Track: Foundations & Connections
Nipmuc citizens will speak on their Northeastern Woodland homelands and the impact of settler colonialism, land dispossession, and forced assimilation. They will address Aboriginal rights and their centrality to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. They will also identify best practices to support these rights such as affirmative easements (e.g., cultural easements, cultural respect agreements), educational signage and programming, and website content. Participants will learn strategies to move in solidarity with individual Tribal members, Tribes, and Tribal or Indigenous NGOs to create place-based healing and cultural revitalization, and to restore land access. The challenges, successes, and outcomes of this kind of collaborative work will be discussed through the lens of a collaboration between the Nipmuc-led organization No Loose Braids and the Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust.
Speakers: Jennifer Albertine, Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, North Quabbin Regional Landscape Partnership; Pam Ellis, Chagwas Cultural Resource Consulting, LLC; Andre Strongbearheart Gaines/Roberson, Jr., No Loose Braids, North Quabbin Regional Landscape Partnership; Kimberly Toney, Brown University Libraries
Track: Foundations & Connections
The Woodlands Partnership of Northwest Massachusetts (established in 2018 state law as the Mohawk Trail Woodlands Partnership) is a public body representing 21 mostly rural towns in the heavily forested Northwest corner of the Commonwealth. The Board is led by municipal representatives and includes members appointed by land trusts, watershed associations, regional planning agencies, and community/economic development corporations and nonprofits, among others. This unique and inclusive model, while providing the opportunity for landscape-level impact and connection, brings to the forefront systemic issues between municipal needs, Indigenous stewardship, natural resource-based job creation, and land conservation. Stakeholders will discuss persistent challenges, and lessons learned as this evolving partnership seeks to improve the health of both human and natural communities in this special place.
Speakers: Buzz Constable, attorney; Kurt Gaertner, Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; Gus Seelig, Vermont Housing Conservation Board; Jonathan Thompson, Harvard Forest
Moderator: Liz Thompson, From the Ground Up
Track: Space for Nature & People
Public housing residents are on the frontlines of climate, health, and income disparities. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) share a new model for equitable, resilient park development rooted in community engagement, strategic planning, and cross-sector partnership. BHA is significantly investing in the open spaces of its housing communities. Through two active projects, participants will learn how co-designed outdoor spaces can improve quality of life for historically marginalized communities. The session explores BHA’s work to increase green infrastructure, and presenters will share how BHA’s first-ever open space inventory, supported by TPL, lays the groundwork for system-wide green space improvements. The session highlights how leveraging public funding enables transformative investments. This model shows how trusted partnerships can help housing authorities create inclusive, healthier, more resilient communities.
Speakers: Robert (Bobby) Bell, Boston Housing Authority; Melissa Green, Trust for Public Land; Rahul Ramesh, Boston Housing Authority.
Track: Space for Nature & People
Join us for an informative workshop to learn about sustainable development strategies that harmonize growth with the preservation of open space. Based on Open Space Residential Design (OSRD) best practices, this session explores innovative planning approaches. We will discuss SRPEDD’s recent OSRD regional bylaw review and provide bylaw updates for pilot communities. Nature-sensitive designs and bylaws aim to protect natural resources by encouraging the preservation of open space while accommodating a community’s diverse housing needs. This workshop offers valuable insight into creating resilient, inclusive communities that prioritize people and the planet.
Speakers: Karen Pettinelli, Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District; Michelle Tinger, Southeastern Regional Planning & Economic Development District
Track: Innovation, Design, & Resilience
This workshop will share how the Northern Forest Center is creating quality, middle-market homes across the Northern Forest region. We focus on adaptive reuse, infill development, and walkable sites as ways to address urgent housing needs without compromising outlying forests and agricultural lands. We’re also prioritizing wood products in our buildings, tying our housing work to the regional forest economy and reducing carbon impact. Within the next two years we plan to have 100 homes across four states complete, in wide variety, from historic rehabilitation to new single-family construction, and others.
Speakers: Maura Adams, Northern Forest Center; Mike Wilson, Northern Forest Center, Maine West
Track: Innovation, Design, & Resilience
How do you move your RCP from individual, targeted projects to collaborating and coordinating efforts across multiple sectors at the regional scale? The High Peaks Initiative has attained success in leveraging funding for smaller-scale projects on an individual basis, but it was clear that the current conditions with respect to conservation, access, climate-induced events, pandemic-related social factors, and more, would require us to change our approach. This workshop will focus on steps the High Peaks Initiative has taken towards this reorientation—what has worked, what hasn’t, and what our goals are for the future.
Speakers: Nancy Perlson, High Peaks Initiative; Simon Rucker, Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust, High Peaks Initiative
Track: Communication, Coordination & Collaboration
Networks have capabilities and impacts that transcend those of any one person or group acting on their own. There are many regional conservation networks located in the Northeast, but with so little capacity to add more responsibilities to our current workload, how can we leverage networks to enhance the work that we’re leading at our own organizations? This session will explore the concepts of network identity and weaving using the example of the Connecticut River Watershed Partnership that has recently evolved in name, governance, and scope. We will invite participants to identify their networks and name areas of connectivity, alignment, and coordinated action to accomplish more together.
NOTE: Workshop participants are encouraged to attend the B8 session, Coordinating across geographies, scales, strategies, and sectors to improve conservation outcomes for all, which will build upon the ideas presented here, including scope and impact of networks, to explore real world applications for Northeast-based networks working across disciplines and geographies.
Speakers: Curtis Ogden, Interaction Institute for Social Change, Food Solutions New England; Markelle Smith, Mass Audubon, Connecticut River Watershed Partnership
Track: Communication, Coordination, & Collaboration
Session B – 1:30 PM to 2:45 PM
Living Earth is an interactive workshop that invites participants into a collective journey of reconnection, visioning, and applied ecological thinking. The session opens with grounding videos and ancestral sources to awaken ecological memory and shared humanity. In small groups, participants will reflect on rehumanizing questions that build trust, interconnectedness, and cross-sector understanding. The second half will focus on applying Lo-TEK (Local Traditional Ecological Knowledge) to contemporary land and climate challenges. Groups will select a real-world issue and begin envisioning nature-based responses rooted in Lo-TEK principles. This workshop supports those working to integrate justice, ancestral knowledge, and ecological design into conservation and community resilience efforts.
Speaker: Melissa Hunter Gurney, Lo-TEK Institute
Track: Foundations & Connections
Region 9 of the USDA Forest Service aims to increase engagement with beginning forest landowners, landowners living in high poverty areas, and veterans, three groups that are underserved by forestry programming. To meet this aim, our goals were to compile existing information on these landowner groups and the barriers they face to participation in forestry programming; identify the types of tools most useful for bridging these barriers; and produce resources to support engagement with underserved landowners. During this workshop, we will present resources to support engagement with underserved landowners. Participants will work in groups to discuss how they might integrate these resources into their work, challenges they may face, and how we can improve these resources going forward.
Speakers: Brett Butler, USDA Forest Service; Katherine Hollins, Welsummer Consulting; Emmalyn Terracciano, Family Forest Research Center
Moderator: Laura Vachula, Family Forest Research Center, UMass Amherst
Track: Foundations & Connections
This presentation will explore the importance of mapping, cartography, and data visualization in conservation communication and related social justice issues. First, we will look at how mapping and data visualization can communicate complex and multi-layered data. As we explore different forms of mapping and data visualization that are or have been used in conservation efforts, we will also discuss the social justice implications and the questions: What communities are being served by conservation efforts? Have we missed the target in our diversity and outreach campaigns? With the recent policy changes, we will attempt to ask ourselves a more existential question: What are we doing, and how do we sustain?
Speaker: Chris Carr, Black Land Ownership
Track: Foundations & Connections
Farmers in New England face unique challenges: severe development pressure on farmland, a shortage of affordable housing, and difficulty competing against larger farms in certain markets. Conservation groups working to save farmland need to preserve not only natural resources, but also the farmer’s ability to run a viable business. This workshop will engage participants in a discussion of farm-friendly conservation easement terms. Topics will include: agricultural infrastructure and housing on protected farms, easement terms for agritourism and other ancillary land uses, affordability tools, affirmative farming covenants, best practices for stewarding protected farmland, and case studies. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and exchange resources with other attendees.
Speakers: Kathleen Doherty, American Farmland Trust; Jennifer Dubois, The Trustees of Reservations
Track: Space for Nature & People
The interconnected housing, climate, and biodiversity crises challenge the well-being of our communities. The development of affordable housing and the conservation of important landscapes are too often seen as incompatible land uses and are pitted against each other. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, conservation and affordable housing advocates are taking different approaches to break down silos to address these urgent needs together. Panelists will explore the different ways that affordable housing is impacted by conservation work, examine potential points of alignment, and discuss opportunities for conservationists and affordable housing advocates to collaborate. Through this interactive session, participants will identify opportunities to align housing and conservation goals in their own communities, treating homes and habitats not as competing interests, but as essential elements of a resilient and equitable future.
Speakers: Jocelyn Ayer, Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity; Melina Lodge, Housing Network of Rhode Island; Connie Manes, Manes Consulting, LLC, Litchfield Hills Greenprint Collaborative; Kate Sayles, Rhode Island Land Trust Council, Rhode Island Woodland Partnership
Moderator: Jennifer Plowden, Land Trust Alliance
Track: Space for Nature & People
How well do we know our home places? In the face of the entangled environmental and social crises of our day, what do we need to value, protect, and restore? From headwaters to hickory trees, bioregional mapping is a tool to help us deepen our understanding of our communities and places, and to strategically protect and steward them. Both holistic and data-driven, this approach layers physical, ecological, climatic, and cultural awareness to build connection and inform conservation. In this two-part session, participants will engage in bioregional mapping to bring patterns of connectivity and resilience into view through a hands-on workshop led by Wellspring Commons. Then, Vermont River Conservancy will present a case study in statewide and watershed-scale strategic conservation planning informed by bioregional mapping, including the why and how of incorporating fluvial geomorphology, hydrology, ecological connectivity, climate science, social values, and socioeconomic conditions into conservation plans.
Speakers: Erin De Vries, Vermont River Conservancy; Hayley Kolding, Vermont River Conservancy; Keetu Winter, Wellspring Commons
Track: Innovation, Design, & Resilience
With networked approaches for tackling environmental and societal problems still the exception, a common challenge leaders face is quantifying and articulating the impacts of their RCPs or other networks. This session focuses on that challenge. We will draw upon learnings from recent evaluations of both the nationwide Catalyst Fund and the Massachusetts Ecosystem Adaptation Network to highlight approaches to evaluating impact and to explore the importance of networks in bolstering the personal resilience of members and delivering on-the-ground conservation outcomes. This session will share actionable steps and important outcomes from our own assessments to help practitioners think about capturing and articulating the impact of their RCPs or other networks.
Speakers: Melissa Ocana, UMass Amherst Extension, Connecticut River Partnership, Jonathan Peterson, Network for Landscape Conservation
Track: Communication, Coordination, & Collaboration
The Northeast hosts a rich mosaic of landscape conservation partnerships, yet many efforts remain siloed by geography or priority. This interactive workshop asks: How can we better coordinate across overlapping conservation partnerships and initiatives to further align goals, strategies, and messaging, while also deepening engagement of key sectors like planning, transportation, housing, industry, and agriculture? Building on momentum from the Northeast Fish & Wildlife Conference and the Northeastern North America/Turtle Island Landscape Connectivity Summit, this session invites practitioners from all backgrounds to develop a shared vision for collaborative, cross-scale conservation. Designed to be inclusive, engaging, and solutions-focused, the workshop will uncover practical ways to optimize resources and amplify collective impact.
NOTE: Workshop participants are encouraged to attend the A8 session, Network Science and Practice for More Power-full Partnerships, which will lay the groundwork for the value and impacts of networks, including the importance of network weaving and coordinated action, ensuring we’re aligned in our understanding of the value of networks in advance of this interactive workshop.
Speakers: Mikael Cejtin, Staying Connected Initiative; Phil Huffman, The Quebec-Labrador Foundation; Laura Marx, The Nature Conservancy, Berkshire Wildlife Linkage; Markelle Smith, Mass Audubon, Connecticut River Watershed Partnership RCP; Liz Willey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service / Northeast Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies; Faren Wolter, USFWS, Chesapeake WILD Program
Track: Communication, Coordination, & Collaboration
Closing Plenary – 3 PM to 4 PM
As the Northeast faces a deepening housing crisis and urgent calls to protect nature through goals like 30×30 and 40×50, how can we balance land use decisions to ensure everyone has access to both housing and the natural world, two fundamental human rights?
This session will explore how to build meaningful collaborations between affordable housing and conservation advocates to shape state policy, navigate land use tensions, and create durable, values-based partnerships. Featuring leaders from both sectors, the conversation will highlight what works in coalition-building, relationship dynamics, and policy frameworks that are advancing shared solutions. We’ll examine Vermont’s long-standing model of cross-sector collaboration, as well as newer efforts emerging across the region.
Hosted by the Northeast Forest Network, a coalition dedicated to protecting forests and the communities that depend on them, this session invites participants to reimagine land use not as a zero-sum game, but as an opportunity for deeper coordination, fairness, and impact.