39.1 - Seek full funding for the Healthy Lands Initiative

Karen Prentice, National Healthy Landscapes Coordinator at the Bureau of Land Management, indicates:
"Since the inception of the HLI in 2007, the Bureau of Land Management has secured funding for the Healthy Landscapes program, and has improved its capacity to conduct landscape-level work that conserves working lands and benefits wildlife and habitat conservation. Healthy Landscapes funds have been used in partnership with federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, Tribes, and private individuals to complete landscape scale conservation projects throughout the western states including more than 1.7 million acres of treatments in New Mexico through the Restore New Mexico program, more than 1 million acres of treatments in Utah in partnership with the Utah Watershed Initiative, and hundreds of thousands of acres of restoration projects through such partnerships as the Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative, the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, and many lesser known projects coordinated at District Office levels. Although exact rates vary project to project, BLM’s HL funds are typically leveraged at a 5:1 ratio. It should be noted that requests for Healthy Landscapes funding far outstrip available funds. BLM’s restoration work complements and is often coordinated with state and local level partners as well as with similar landscape-level initiatives at NRCS, USFS, and other Federal Land Management agencies."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that the strategic habitat conservation (SHC) "approach is built on five main components : (1) biological planning – working with partners to establish shared conservation targets and measurable biological objectives (i.e. population) for these outcomes, and identify limiting factors affecting our shared conservation targets; (2) conservation design – creating tools that allow us to direct conservation actions to most effectively contribute to measurable biological outcomes, (3) conservation delivery – working collaboratively with a broad range of partners to create and carry out conservation strategies with value at multiple spatial scales, and (4) outcome-based monitoring – evaluating the effectiveness of conservation actions in reaching biological outcomes and to adapt future planning and delivery and (5) assumption driven research – testing assumptions made during biological planning to refine future plans and actions. Both monitoring and research help us learn from our decisions and activities and improve them over time."

The USFWS's Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC's) have as their mission, "to provide the science and technical expertise needed to support conservation planning at landscape scales..." As part of this effort, LCC's bring together various stakeholders at a cross boundary level to address broader habitat issues. Therefore, LCC's may provide a venue for formal, routine communication and coordination.