Center for Large Landscape Conservation
Catalyzing Big Bold Initiatives to Protect Biodiversity
WILD’s core commitment to international wilderness protection and sustainability has a great deal to do with thinking in terms of large landscapes. Protecting pockets of wilderness surrounded by development does not serve our vision of wild-spaces; we must have a broader view. The concept of connectivity, keeping core ecosystems connected so that wildlife and ecological processes are healthy and life-supporting, is an integral part of our work.
Connecting landscapes at a macro-level takes creativity, vision, expertise, and out-of-the-box thinking. Furthermore, no one organization can or should do this independently. Building rigorous and lasting conservation initiatives requires well-constructed collaboration, just as the elements of an ecological system work together to create processes stronger and larger than each of the parts. Collaboration is also a core element to WILD’s working philosophy. It allows donor dollars to be used efficiently and effectively, and it yields exponentially greater results for wilderness conservation.
The Center for Large Landscape Conservation’s (CLLC) work includes both of these key concepts. CLLC, now a program of WILD, combines its well-known ecological expertise with ours to better address landscape-scale conservation opportunities in North America and abroad. CLLC was founded and is run by Gary Tabor, a highly respected conservationist with a long history of accomplishments in Africa, Australia, and North America working for both private foundations and conservation NGOs.
Serving as an inter-organizational, scientific, and collaborative catalyst, CLLC is involved in a variety of ongoing initiatives:
- The Science Collaborative for Climate Adaptation (housed at the National Center for Environmental Analysis and Synthesis) is a collaborative effort designed to leverage the creative expertise of the world’s leading researchers to comprehensively develop and implement the science of climate change adaptation. Its core members include: CLLC, Conservation International, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, The Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
- Implementing the Western Governors Association’s Wildlife Corridors Initiative, a policy initiative catalyzed by CLLC geared toward protecting crucial habitat and wildlife corridors throughout the 19 western
states. As a result of this initiative, western states are revising their Wildlife Action Plans to identify and incorporate management strategies for areas of crucial habitat and connectivity for wildlife health and climate change adaptation. CLLC is facilitating Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s revision effort and advising other states such as Arizona in this process. - Freedom to Roam – a campaign designed and launched by Patagonia Company and CLLC aimed at broadening the constituency of support for wildlife corridors throughout the country by engaging businesses such as British Petroleum and Microsoft with the goal of influencing policy and advancing science related to climate change and land use management.
- The Climate Change, Wildlife Corridors & Health Consequences Initiative – a collaborative between CLLC, the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University, and Princeton University. The goal of the initiative is to provide a scientific basis to craft policies that will facilitate wildlife preservation strategies without exacerbating existing or new disease threats to wildlife.
Read more about CLLC >