Meeting the Challenge

Date: 

Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 11:00am to 12:00pm

Location: 

Online Webinar

Working with Large Federal Agencies to Achieve Large Landscape Conservation Goals
Moderated by Jim Levitt, Director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University

About the Web Session
This online session will focus on opportunities to work alongside the U.S. Federal Government to advance large landscape conservation initiatives. The first opportunity we will consider is with the Department of Defense, which has recently issued the REPI Challenge to encourage projects that conserve land at a greater scale and test promising ways to finance land protection that will help the REPI program meet its ambitious goals with limited funding. As Nancy Natoli of the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations and Environment) will discuss, the Department may provide up to $5 million in additional FY12 funding for land transactions in the states of Georgia (Forts Benning, Stewart, and Gordon only) and Florida (Eglin Air Force Base and Camp Blanding only). The second case we will examine is focused on a recent conservation success on Maine’s Schoodic Point, where Lyme Timber Company - working in concert with several nonprofits – was able to protect a key, and relatively large, parcel of land adjacent to Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Peninsula District. Peter Stein of Lyme Timber will be on hand to give us insight into the deal that came to pass after many years of complex and patient negotiation.

About the Moderator
Jim Levitt is director of the Program on Conservation Innovation at the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, and a research fellow at the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His focus is in present-day and historic innovation in the practice of land and biodiversity conservation. In addition to his work at Harvard, he also leads the annual Conservation Leadership Dialogue, sponsored by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy.