Promoting resiliency and protecting large landscapes is a valuable venture. Across the country there are many collaborative groups that are cooperating to develop landscape-scale conservation strategies and associated actionable initiatives.
The Great Basin is one of the American West's large, contiguous landscapes. The region covers portions of Idaho, Oregon, California, Nevada and Utah.
Focused on the Great Basin, one of 22 Landscape Conservation Cooperatives in North America, the Great Basin Landscape Conservation Cooperative (Great Basin LCC) represents a partnership among public and private groups. The Great Basin LCC supports landscape-scale conservation, promotes science, and enables management based on traditional knowledge and science so human and ecological communities can respond and adapt to climate and land use change. The vast mission of the Great Basin LCC comprises many specific priorities, foremost:
Adaptation to changes in water availability, temperature, climate variability, and extreme climatic events; and,
Adaptation to changes in ecosystem structure, processes, function, and interactions.
Secondarily, the organization prioritizes the most important challenges facing the Great Basin region, including:
Surface water/groundwater interactions;
Surface water availability;
Fire (wildfire/prescribed fire);
Invasive species; and,
Insects, disease and pathogens.
Organizations such as Great Basin LCC provide private landowners, land trusts, and other stakeholders with key research, relevant insights, and a host of tools and resources. Their 2016 Highlights Report features the great work initiated and executed by the cooperative in the last year.
To learn more, check out the video below. If you live in the Great Basin area and would like to get involved, contact Great Basin LCC and sign up for their newsletter for ways you can engage in this important initiative.