2 LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY • Land Lines • OCTOBER 2011Exploring the Future of Large Landscape Conservation© iStockphoto/Denis Tangney, Jr.James N. LevittIn the tradition of previous conservation dia-logues, a cross-sectoral, geographically diverse group of conservationists convened to seek a path forward—in concert with the Obama administration’s recently released report on America’s Great Outdoors (Council on Environmental Quality 2011), as well as myriad initiatives at the state and local level. Their goals were to advance collaboration on a large landscape scale among landowners, land managers, and citizens from the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors They also sought to understand and expand on the example set by large landscape initiatives that are achieving measurable, durable conservation outcomes that will provide benefits for generations to come. Just as we can now appreciate the revival of the White Mountains of New Hampshire from their barren, moonscape-like conditions around 1900 to their majestic, verdant stature today, twenty- second century Americans ought to be able to appreciate how our foresight in working across property, jurisdictional, and even national bound-aries has become a key element in the nation’s multigenerational effort to preserve essential sources of clean water, sustainably produced forest prod-ucts, and expansive recreational opportunities. Speakers’ CommentsThe conference speakers emphasized the impor-tance of sustained cooperation across many orga-nizations and sectors to achieve lasting results. Proudly recounting how some two million acres of Maine forestland has been conserved over the past dozen years, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, reported that “we have done this by build-ing a partnership among government at all levels, the forest products industry, environmental, forestry and recreation groups, and landowners. Through this partnership, we have been able to maintain or increase productivity for wood and harvest levels, supporting a diverse and robust forest products industry that employs tens of thousands of work-ers who produce paper, other wood products, and renewable energy. At the same time, we have been able to protect biodiversity, old growth and late White Mountain National Forest near the Town of Berlin, New HampshireOCTOBER 2011 • Land Lines • LINCOLN INSTITUTE OF LAND POLICY 3succession forest, and public access to recreation, and also increase opportunities for tourism” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 72).Representatives Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, and Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, each stressed the importance of perseverance in such efforts. Welch remarked on the value of sus-taining land conservation budgets during the cur-rent round of budget negotiations. He reminded the audience that in 1864 President Abraham Lincoln took his attention off a monumental crisis —the Civil War—in order to sign a bill deeding the area of Yosemite to the state of California for public use and recreation. If Lincoln could create Yosemite in the midst of the Civil War, Welch asserted, we can do our part in a time of tight budgets and economic volatility. Holt focused his remarks on achieving a long-standing promise to fully fund the federal and stateside portions of the Land and Water Conser-vation Fund (LWCF), as well as a number of other legislative initiatives such as the Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act. Holt was emphatic in urging the conservation community to respond to the need for urgent action for our own sake, and for the sake of future generations. He reminded the audience of the admonition of President Lyndon Johnson, signer of the original LWCF legislation and the Wilderness Act in 1964: “If future genera-tions are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow,” said Johnson, “we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it” (Henry and Armstrong 2004, 123). It was evident from the discussions that leaders from every sector stand ready to help implement the cooperative conservation aspirations of Collins, Welch, and Holt. Bob Bendick, director of U.S. government relations at The Nature Conservancy, stated that “the overall objective of AGO [America’s Great Outdoors] should be to create and sustain a national network of large areas of restored and conserved land, water, and coastlines around which Americans can build productive and healthy lives” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 74). Accordingly, Bendick shared with the assembled group his personal dream that someday his young granddaughters might, as adults, look out from the arch at the gateway to Yellowstone National Park and note that “all across America, 400 million people have been able to arrange themselves and their activities across this remarkable country in a way that reconciles their lives with the power, grace, beauty and pro-ductivity of the land and water that ultimately sustain us all” (Levitt and Chester 2011, 75). Will Shafroth, acting assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks of the U.S. Depart-ment of Interior, and Harris Sherman, under- secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shared their frank assessments of the current situation. Shafroth described the hard work and extensive comments that helped shape the America’s Great Outdoors report. While this work serves as a good foundation for the effort ahead, Shafroth noted that it takes considerable creativity and proactive thinking to sustain conservation momentum in these times of sharp budgetary constraints. Sherman added that the whole idea of land-scape-scale conservation implies that we need to move from performing random acts of conser-vation to more comprehensive and collaborative large-scale initiatives that engage many agencies and ownership types. Of particular importance, he noted, will be the outcome of the debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, because its conservation provisions will be critically important to the success of large-scale conservation efforts. The enthusiasm for large landscape conserva-tion on the part of speakers from large public and Conservation Leadership DialogueOn March 1, 2011, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy hosted its tenth annual Conservation