Natural Areas

Climate Change & Conservation eNews

Natural Areas

Sheep
Judy Anderson

Douglas County sheep farm working to restore soil and build community, agrivoltaics

"We are an integrated farming business, but we also aggregate and provide market access for other farmers. So instead of having to rely on just a few commodities, smaller farms can diversify their portfolio. When they can diversify their portfolio they have more power over the economics of farming and they can make those changes that help conserve soil.” Another aspect of Jacqueline’s collaborative vision for healthy ecosystems and agriculture economies is agrivoltaics — which involves the simultaneous use of land for both solar power generation and agriculture..."

“Co-locating farming and clean energy production on agricultural land creates rural economic resiliency, provides land access for new and underserved farmers, and builds vital agricultural infrastructure. Unlocking these bottlenecks will create food security that allows small farmers to compete in a global extractive market while focusing on restorative farming practices that heal the land”…

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us
Wildlands Network

Continental Wildways

The Eastern Wildway runs all the way from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Initiatives of this size and scope play a big role in what we need to make an impact.

Sustaining biodiversity requires a big-picture vision. Our projects are strategically positioned across Canada, the United States and Mexico to preserve nature at a continental scale.

Using the principles of conservation biology, our founders identified the core native wildlife habitat areas and the corridors that connect them. We call them Wildways. This innovative concept has fundamentally shaped conservation projects across North America.

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Western Ny
Western NY Wildway

A bold initiative

There's a window of time in which land trusts, communities, and conservation groups can conserve wildlife conservation corridors before they are lost to unrelenting development. Results of this also mean protecting waterways, soil health, and community spaces.

The Western New York Land Conservancy is leading an effort to create the WNY Wildway, an ambitious long-term plan to protect and connect the largest of their region’s remaining forests. The Wildway will connect the vast forests of northern Pennsylvania to the Great lakes, through to the Finger Lakes, the Adirondacks, and beyond. It will form part of the Eastern Wildway which runs all the way from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Wildway will allow plants and animals to roam across the land as they once did, to move as climate changes, and to expand their ranges and ensure their survival. It will allow wildlife that have disappeared from their region to return home.

You can learn more, and perhaps draw inspiration for your own region, by viewing their “story map” which provides images as well as text to convey the challenges and solutions.

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Leaves
iStock

Largest urban forest carbon credit purchase to support conserving land

As land trusts work to slow down climate change, carbon credits are now part of the strategy. Ensuring that they are well-designed and applied appropriately is more important than ever.

The largest urban forest carbon credit sale in the nation, as of 2021, will support land conservation in the southwestern Pennsylvania region by Allegheny Land Trust.

This significant purchase increases the capacity of the land trust to conserve and care for more crucial green space in southwestern Pennsylvania…

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Woods
Land Trust of Napa Valley

Land trust works with partners to complete forest-thinning project in Angwin

Land trusts are working in partnership with local, state, and regional organizations to participate in climate-related demonstration projects and research, as well as sharing results as to how land can be managed to slow down climate change, reduce fire risk, and enhance other important goals.

The Land Trust of Napa County, California State Coastal Conservancy, Napa County Resource Conservation District (Napa RCD), and the Natural Resources Conservation Service are pleased to announce completion of a large fuels reduction and forest health project on the Land Trust’s Linda Falls Preserve in Angwin, CA.

This preserve is open to the public and many visitors come to the property to hike and see Linda Falls, a waterfall along Conn Creek.

The project involved thinning the forest across 120 acres. The thinning is aimed at both reducing the risks of wildfire along the southeast flank of the community of Angwin and increasing the resilience of the forest to fires, drought and other effects of climate change.

Angwin is one of the few areas in the hills of Napa County that has not burned in the last five years so wildfire risk reduction there is a priority for CAL FIRE, Napa Communities Firewise, and Napa County Fire…

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cow
Celia Llopis-Jepsen / Kansas News Service

How satellite-guided cows might save the Kansas prairie and make ranchers more money

Cattle may not boost plant biodiversity on the prairie as much as bison do, but The Nature Conservancy thinks it’s possible to manage them in ways that support healthier grassland. They are working with a Flint Hills cattle rancher near Strong City in Kansas, along with Kansas State scientists, to see how fitting a herd with GPS collars might help.

STRONG CITY, Kansas — Third-generation rancher Daniel Mushrush has 30-plus miles of barbed wire fence to tend to.

Calves wriggle beneath it. The wires get loose. Wild animals take a toll. And when streams surge after storms, rushing water often snaps sections in two.

For Mushrush and his family, the fence-mending on their Flint Hills ranch never ends. It’s inescapable.

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Bison
iStock

Climate change threatens the Great Plains, but bison may hold a key to resilience

Partnerships between tribal nations, land trusts, and universities are on the rise related to prairie management, biodiversity, and slowing down (and/or adapting to) climate change. This article touches on many of those concepts, including bison and cattle management.

“The 8,600-acre Konza Prairie Biological Station where Kansas State conducts its bison research lies in the Flint Hills, North America’s biggest remaining stretch of tallgrass prairie.

Once one of North America’s major ecosystems — covering large swaths of the Great Plains from what is today central Texas to south-central Canada — settlers and their descendants destroyed more than 95% of the continent’s tallgrass prairie for cropland and other development. Tallgrass in the Flint Hills escaped the plow only because the region’s shallow soil and rocky layers made farming less practicable there…

Bison act and eat differently than cattle do, though biologists say not all the differences are clear yet. Few studies compare these two bovine herbivores side by side.

Still, a few differences jump out. The bigger species not only eats more grass, it also spends less time along streams than cattle do and more time on hilltops…”

Cattle may not boost plant biodiversity on the prairie as much as bison do, but The Nature Conservancy thinks it’s possible to manage them in ways that support healthier grassland.

They are working with a Flint Hills cattle rancher near Strong City in Kansas, along with Kansas State scientists, to see how fitting a herd with GPS collars might help….

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Island
Judy Anderson

Nature-based solutions funding database

You may want to share this resource with others as nature-based climate solution funding expands.

National Wildlife Federation has created an interactive database for communities interested in pursuing federal funding and/or technical assistance for nature-based solutions. You can use their filters to search for nature-based solutions funding and technical assistance resources that fit your needs. For additional information on search filters, see their Glossary page.

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Swamp
© Marjo Aho from TNC

How nature can get us 37 percent of the way to the Paris Climate Target

This study by The Nature Conservancy and others is often cited as evidence that nature-based climate solutions could slow down climate change by as much as 37% worldwide.

“The last two years have seen significant global advancement on climate action, with hundreds of global businesses and national and sub-national leaders building on the momentum of the Paris Agreement to initiate new climate pledges, initiatives and funding programs. But there remains a gap between promised action and realized climate progress, and many solutions available to us now remain underutilized—especially in the land sector, which currently accounts for nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions…”

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Leaves
Judy Anderson

New England’s climate imperative: our forests as a natural climate solution

Land trusts across the country are working to conserve woodlands and forests, while communicating the importance of woodland management and protection for the climate.

In this study, five pathways are developed and assessed that could increase the climate mitigation potential of New England’s forests:

  • Avoided deforestation
  • Wildland reserves
  • Improved forest management
  • Mass timber construction
  • Urban and suburban forests
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