Even as unprecedented levels of public funds have been directed towards the restoration, stewardship, and conservation of our lands and waters in recent years, the influx of project delivery funding has only served to underscore a gap that needs to be filled: the on-the-ground capacity to get the work done. The Catalyst Fund aims to build capacity and help local Landscape Partnerships contribute toward achieving national conservation goals. 

Catalyst Fund: an innovative and critical funding source

The Network for Landscape Conservation launched the Catalyst Fund Program in 2019 to accelerate the pace and practice of collaborative landscape conservation and stewardship across the United States. The Catalyst Fund couples financial support through a competitive grant process with an in-depth Peer Learning and capacity building experience. The CF focuses on strengthening the collaborative capacity of place-based, community-grounded Landscape Partnerships. These investments are intended to better position Partnerships to achieve long-term conservation and stewardship success, building in landscapes across the country the enduring collaborative infrastructure and social capital needed to address systems-level challenges like the biodiversity, climate change, and environmental injustice crises. A portion of the Fund is dedicated to supporting Indigenous leadership in landscape conservation and stewardship.

With this its sixth annual grant cycle, the Catalyst Fund has supported 85 Landscape Partnerships from throughout the United States, totaling more than $2 million in support. The Catalyst Fund seeks to boost Partnerships that demonstrate a genuinely collaborative approach to protecting the landscapes they call home. These Partnerships are working on a broad range of issues and priorities that are relevant to their home landscapes,  ranging from climate resilience, wildlife corridor protection, landscape connectivity, watershed enhancement and management, cultural revitalization, Indigenous co-stewardship, forest health, and more. 

Highlight: Peer Learning commitment and Annual Retreat

Collaborative landscape conservation and stewardship is an emerging practice, and practitioners often feel as if they must wrestle with figuring out the what and how of this work on their own. Recognizing this, the Catalyst Fund has embraced an emphasis on peer learning. NLC supports a peer learning cohort for grantees in each grant cycle, providing regular networking and exchange/learning opportunities for the grantees. Through monthly virtual meetings and an in-person annual retreat, the cohorts connect with one another to share support, insight, knowledge, exploration, and inspiration–all of which strengthens practitioner capacity and confidence to carry out the complex, challenging, and essential work of building and stewarding collaboration for landscape outcomes.  

2024 Grant Awards! 

Every year, the Network receives submissions from across the United States–all of which reflect inspiring work aimed at shifting trajectories within landscapes in response to the climate and biodiversity crises and the legacies of environmental injustice.

Check out the 2024 Catalyst Fund Grant Awards Here

As the Network reflects on this grant cycle—and indeed on the last six years of grantmaking and capacity-building within the Catalyst Fund—it seems only clearer  that the place-based, community-grounded Landscape Partnerships that apply to the Catalyst Fund are essential vehicles for delivering the holistic conservation, stewardship, and restoration successes needed to respond to the interwoven biodiversity, climate, and environmental injustice crises. As NLC Director Jon Peterson notes, 

“We continue to feel that collaborative capacity investments are a critical, foundational–and too often missing–element. Such investments open the aperture of opportunity and potential: By supporting the core functions of bringing people together across interest, perspective, and cultures, and enabling effective collaboration over time, collaborative capacity creates the space to develop and bring forward the bold, innovative, and previously unimagined (or perhaps even previously unimaginable) projects that are capable of addressing complex, pressing challenges. In short, this is how we bring forward systems-level solutions to the systems-level challenges we face.”

The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Generous support for the Catalyst Fund is provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

^{Top photo: Tent Rocks, Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico. Credit: Unsplash}

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NEWS RELEASE

BOZEMAN, MT, October 11, 2022 – This is a watershed moment for conservation in the United States. The Biden administration’s America the Beautiful initiative—along with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Law—is driving unprecedented levels of funding into the restoration, stewardship, and conservation of our lands and waters. But this reveals a gap that needs to be filled: the on-the-ground capacity to get the work done. The Catalyst Fund, with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, aims to build capacity and help local and regional partnerships contribute toward achieving national conservation goals.

The Network for Landscape Conservation recently announced its newest round of Catalyst Fund grants, with 13 partnerships from throughout the United States receiving awards totaling more than $320,000 in support.

“These grants are aimed at strengthening the collaborative capacity of partnerships that demonstrate a genuinely collaborative approach to protecting the landscapes they call home, so that these partnerships can accelerate the pace and scale at which they realize successful conservation outcomes,” says Jonathan Peterson, Program Manager for the Network for Landscape Conservation.

Launched in 2019, the Catalyst Fund has now supported 55 landscape partnerships, distributing a total of more than $1.3 million in grants nationwide across four annual grant cycles.

These investments are timely: The scope and urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises and the legacies of environmental injustice require action at a landscape scale. The emerging federal funding recognizes this, focusing on getting projects with landscape-level impact completed on the ground. There is a missing piece though: investments are needed to support the processes of bringing people together across jurisdictions and perspectives, and of integrating the appropriate sciences and knowledge to imagine, develop, and be ready to deliver projects. Supporting the collaborative capacity of landscape partnerships is critical to maximizing the impact of the federal funding.

“The Catalyst Fund grants provide a unique opportunity to accelerate collaborative conservation projects across the country,” says Sacha Spector, program director for the environment at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. “Tackling complex challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental injustice requires ambitious and innovative action that brings people together across geographic and institutional boundaries. We’re excited to support the Catalyst Fund’s effort to sustain capacity, foster collaboration and develop solutions that result in strong partnerships and connected landscapes.”

The Catalyst Fund is based on the belief that deep approaches to collaboration—in which understanding and connection is built across difference, and power is shared with those that have been historically excluded—are critical to efforts to sustain the ecological health of our landscapes and foster a more just, equitable future for our communities. A portion of the Fund is specifically dedicated to supporting Indigenous leadership in landscape conservation.

“At the core of the Catalyst Fund is the idea that people across the country care deeply about the places that they call home—the valleys, watersheds, mountain ranges, prairies, bays and estuaries that together make up the heirloom quilt of America’s lands and waters,” says Andrea Keller Helsel of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. “There is lots of evidence that the diverse interests within those places are willing and able to work together to conserve the natural and cultural values they cherish. Catalyst Fund grants provide the wherewithal, particularly for underserved communities, to convene partners to discuss and shape their future and to chart a path forward.  These grants express faith in the wisdom of people to gather good information to make wise decisions about the conservation of our national landscape legacy.”

The 2022 Catalyst Fund grant recipients are:

• Bi-State Tribal Natural Resource Committee (California/Nevada—ancestral homelands of the Paiute, Washoe, and Western Shoshone)
• Blackstone Watershed Collaborative (Massachusetts/Rhode Island)
• Butte Creek Watershed Restoration Collaborative (California—ancestral homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria)
• Cold Hollow to Canada Regional Conservation Partnership (Vermont)
• Greater Chilkat Watershed Advisory Group (Alaska—ancestral homelands of the Jilkaat and Lkoot Tlingit)
• Nesika Wilamut (Oregon—ancestral homelands of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz)
• Salt Valley Watershed Landscape Conservation Partnership (Nebraska)
• Shoal Creek Watershed Consortium (Missouri)
• Stewarding the Asqinaq (Alaska—ancestral homelands of the Yup’ik)
• Tri-Pueblo Coalition (New Mexico—ancestral homelands of the Cochiti, Jemez, and Santo Domingo Pueblos)
• Upper Arkansas Watershed Partnership (Colorado)
• Western Klamath Restoration Partnership (California—ancestral homelands of the Karuk)
• Yuba Forest Network (California)

Learn more about the 2022 grant awards

About the Network for Landscape Conservation

The Network for Landscape Conservation advances collaborative, community-grounded conservation at the landscape scale as an essential approach to connect and protect nature, culture, and community. The Network connects people to ideas and innovations – and each other – building a community of practice for the field of landscape conservation. Its rapidly growing network currently includes more than 250 organizational partners and nearly 6,000 individual practitioners. The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Learn more at landscapeconservation.org

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation:

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The mission of the Foundation’s Environment Program is to ensure a thriving, resilient environment for wildlife and people, and foster an inclusive, effective conservation movement. Learn more at: ddcf.org

About the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation:

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. For more than 50 years, they have supported efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment, support vibrant performing arts, strengthen Bay Area communities, make the philanthropy sector more effective, and foster gender equity and responsive governance around the world. Learn more at hewlett.org

 
Contact:

Christine Gianas Weinheimer
Center for Large Landscape Conservation
(406) 578-1579
communications@largelandscapes.org

Photo, top: Members of the Taos Valley Watershed Coalition discuss project priorities during a field trip to El Salto del Agua Association lands near Taos. TVWC is a 2021 Catalyst Fund grantee. Credit: Taos Valley Watershed Coalition.

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The ocean is critical for sustaining a healthy planet. Consider these facts:

• The ocean produces over 50% of our oxygen.
• It regulates global temperature and weather.
• It provides nearly 7% of all protein consumed by humans. 
• Almost 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by the ocean.
• Only about 8% is protected from increasing human pressures such as extraction, pollution, and fragmentation that are threatening its natural processes, habitats, and species. 

As part of its efforts to conserve the interlinkages of ecosystems to stem biodiversity loss and climate change, the Center operates the Marine Connectivity Working Group (MCWG). This network of experts with diverse interests—such as coral biologists, marine spatial planners, and ocean policy advisors—is now providing connectivity conservation solutions for better managing and sustaining the marine and coastal environment. 

Considering that connectivity research for the ocean is much less advanced than for land, marine experts encouraged the creation of MCWG to be dedicated to expanding the field and its applications. Now, with over 90 expert volunteer members from more than 25 countries on six continents, the group is promoting more consistent marine connectivity policies, programs, and practices through collaboration in science, planning, management, and governance. Together, this growing community of marine experts is working to better address the unique aspects of marine ecological connectivity.

2021 was a watershed year for MCWG and the following brief list highlights some of  the activities resulting from its collaboration and leadership:

• Publishing Marine Connectivity Conservation ‘Rules of Thumb’ for MPA and MPA Network Design to support more consistent efforts to implement solutions for marine protected areas and increase system-based conservation approaches for the management and protection of oceans and coasts. 
• Writing 15 case studies covering 31 countries that exemplify the ‘Rules of Thumb’ and featuring them in a layer on globescapes.org; 
• Publishing the article Advancing marine conservation through ecological connectivity: Building better connections for better protection in the journal Parks Stewardship Forum;
• Supporting planning and participating in the first and second “Deep Dive on Ecological Connectivity” webinars organized by the North American Marine Protected Areas Network (NAMPAN) which brings together resource agencies, managers, practitioners, and other experts across Canada, Mexico, and the United States;
• Developing and circulating a survey on the applicability of the Marine Connectivity Conservation ‘Rules of Thumb’ to eight international MPA networks to gauge current gaps in knowledge in the field of marine connectivity, and publishing Survey Findings: Marine Connectivity Applications in MPAs.
• Presenting the work of MCWG and the ‘Rules of Thumb’ during the symposium “Advancing consistent and measurable global ecological connectivity implementation” at the 2021 International Congress on Conservation Biology;
• Operating the MCWG webpage to continue to promote the group’s work, including the MCWG Library and an ongoing collection of Marine Connectivity Policy Resources. 

The Center thanks MCWG members for their time and efforts pioneering ways to establish marine connectivity conservation as an essential component of national, transboundary, and global policies, as well as on-the ground efforts that achieve long-term ecological integrity of marine and coastal environments.

VIDEO: Learn about one example of a marine ecological corridor and how science is helping countries to conserve it. (1 min, 45 sec)

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This is a pivotal moment for conservation in America, as the climate, biodiversity, and environmental justice crises are only accelerating. At the same time, we are seeing a national discourse coalesce around ambitious conservation visions—like the Biden Administration’s America the Beautiful initiative, which recommends a ten-year, national, locally led campaign to restore the nation’s lands and waters.

While an overarching national framework is critical to ensure the scale of conservation efforts meets the scale of the 21st Century challenges we face, conservation at its most basic is a human endeavor based on knowledge, relationships, and trust—factors that are most effectively built and stewarded at a smaller scale. Thus, local and regional action is necessary for translating national goals into on-the-ground success in conserving landscapes that straddle political, geographic, and cultural divides.

The Catalyst Fund, in aiming to accelerate the pace and effective practice of collaborative landscape conservation, is a critical mechanism for making investments in the “vehicles” that will drive the needed local and regional action.  Grants are intended to serve as strategic investments in strengthening the collaborative capacity of place-based, community-grounded Landscape Conservation Partnerships, especially those at turning points in their development when an infusion of funds can be most impactful.

The 2021 Catalyst Fund grant recipients are:

• Black River Water Trail and Park Network (South Carolina)
• California Central Coast Joint Venture (California)
• East Yellowstone Collaborative Working Group (Wyoming)
• Kittatinny Coalition (Pennsylvania)
• Kali’uokapa’akai Collective (Hawaii)
• Lands Between Partnership (Utah)
• Little Sioux Watershed Conservation Partnership (Iowa & Minnesota)
• Lower Gila River Collaborative (Arizona)
• Moloka’i Wetlands Partnership (Hawaii)
• Ohio River Basin Restoration Partnership (multiple states)
• Taos Valley Watershed Coalition (New Mexico)
• Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (Oklahoma)
• Tulare Basin Watershed Partnership Network (California)
• Western Apache Working Group (Arizona)
• Wind River Conservation Office (Wyoming)

Launched in 2019, the Catalyst Fund has distributed a total of $1 million in grants nationwide across three annual grant cycles. The next anticipated Catalyst Fund grant cycle opening will be in early 2022. 

The Network for Landscape Conservation is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Generous support for the Catalyst Fund is provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Learn more about the 2021 grant awards

Photo: Gela del Rosario via Pexels

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Akash Patil of India spoke of his first encounter with a leopard and his subsequent commitment to a career in conservation. Nayla Azmi told a story of growing up in an Indonesian palm oil plantation and her journey to become an orangutan protector. Sarah Kulis, a recent graduate from West Virginia University, and legally blind, encouraged other aspiring conservationists with disabilities to persevere. These were three of the young storytellers who shared their experiences in conservation at the Center’s workshop at the recent IUCN Global Youth Summit.

On April 12th and 13th, 2021, staff from the Center for Large Landscape Conservation hosted a two-part workshop for early-career conservationists as part of the IUCN’s first ever Global Youth Summit. The workshop, titled “I am a Connector: Spanning Generations and Landscapes with Storytelling,” was one of several dozen events held over the two-week summit (April 5-16). The Global Youth Summit, originally planned as a shoulder event to the now-postponed IUCN World Conservation Congress, was expanded and reimagined in response to the pandemic. Entirely virtual and free to attend, the Summit drew over 10,000 participants from around the world.

“I am a Connector” opened with its first session centered on the power of storytelling to share experiences and inspire conservation actions. Speakers from across the globe gathered to share their own stories and experiences in the conservation field. During the online session, storytellers from 13 countries spoke of overcoming challenges and achieving successes.

Many of the storytellers emphasized the importance of engaging local communities as drivers of conservation. As Anthony Ochieng (TonyWild) of Kenya put it, “You can’t tell a conservation story without including the people.” Though every story was uniquely its own, a common thread was the importance of communication and collaboration. Curtis Bennett, the Director of Equity and Community Engagement at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, noted that, “mentorship is leadership, and it’s a two-way street!” Everyone—whether a conservation professional or personal advocate for nature—has their own story and the ability to inspire others.

Day two of the workshop built on several common themes in the storytelling session, especially the power of connectivity in conservation. Participants were invited to begin this interactive session by designing a “radically human introduction,” presenting a holistic image of themselves and considering the ways that their roots (family, friends, past challenges, and experiences) intersect with their formal affiliations (academic or professional, for example). The session then transitioned to a network-building exercise, where participants used the digital drawing features in Zoom to build a network map identifying their connections to each other.

Through deeply reflective introductions and the subsequent social network mapping, participants were able to highlight the diverse connections that bind us all. For many, this process sparked the realization that all around the world conservationists are facing similar issues. Regardless of geographic or experiential differences, many of us hold similar values and aspirations.

Moving forward, the Center looks to continue supporting youth involvement in conservation. Through the Secretariat of the IUCN WCPA Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group, our staff works to promote connections and networks for advancing conservation work. We unite two kinds of connectivity: human networks and ecological connectivity, “the unimpeded movement of species and flow of natural processes that sustains life on Earth.” Convinced that all of conservation is somehow related to ecological processes and flows, and that young conservationists have the power to advance this work and inform future policy, we will soon be launching a Youth Network for Connectivity Conservation. If you are interested in joining, please consider filling out this form and we will be in touch to follow up. 

The post Connecting Youth for Nature: Experiences from the Global Youth Summit appeared first on Center for Large Landscape Conservation.

“The Network for Landscape Conservation is pleased to announce 13 grant awards for Partnerships working to implement community-grounded conservation at the necessary landscape scale. The funding support will enable each of these Partnerships to accelerate their efforts to build enduring, place-based, collaborative conservation efforts that protect the ecological, cultural, and community health of the landscapes they call home.

These grants are intended to help these Partnerships build critical capacity by supporting the collaborative process and advancing key Partnership building block activities to strengthen the Partnership and accelerate conservation progress.

A full list and description of the 2019 grant recipients can be downloaded here.“

This year’s recipients are:

• Alabama River Diversity Network
• Camas to Condors Partnership
• Greater Baltimore Wilderness Coalition
• Emerald Alliance for People, Nature, and Community
• Eno-New Hope Landscape Conservation Group
• Natural Treasures Alliance
• New York Highlands Network
• Oconee Watershed Partnership
• Safe Water Conservation Collaborative
• Santa Cruz Watershed Collaborative
• Tásmam Koyóm Land Partnership
• Upper Willamette Stewardship Network
• Wishpush Working Group

Explore the details and description of each 2019 grant award by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the page.

The Network for Landscape Conservation advances collaborative, cross border conservation as an essential approach to connect and protect nature, culture, and community. Learn more about the Network here.

The Network is fiscally sponsored by the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. Learn more about the Center here.

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