Focusing Our Resources

With the help of great partners and great science.

Western Reserve Land Conservancy

In the conservation world, time is the enemy. But, like everyone, our resources are limited. So we work hard to prioritize our efforts, ensuring we protect the land with the highest conservation value as soon as possible. Our priority areas include:

                • Natural areas
                • Working lands
                • Coastal areas
                • Historical lands

It isn’t always easy to prioritize, but we have two great assets that help us: great partners and great science.

 

Prioritizing through strong partnerships protecting

We believe that we will protect better land, faster through great teamwork with partners who complement the work we do. We each play a role, and when we coordinate our efforts and our priorities, we see great progress. We have embarked on an effort to collect input and feedback from partners throughout our region to help us identify the highest conservation value areas. We combine all of the feedback we collect – together with our cutting-edge scientific approach – to create a list of high conservation priority areas. We share that priority list with conservation partners throughout our region, so that we are all working together to make a difference.


Guiding efforts through our Anchor Strategy

We believe in the powerful combination of people and science. We have created an Anchor Strategy, which relies on the input of our partners as well as cutting-edge Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to help us identify high priority conservation areas. 


In conservation, adjacency is an important word. Connecting tracts of protected land is vital. Our Anchor Strategy first identifies large resource areas that may serve as “anchors” in the landscape. We then work to connect these anchor areas with corridors. These connections are so important for the movement of wildlife as well as the establishment of territories and nesting habitats.  Connected areas of protected land also give us the greatest potential for groundwater recharge, filtering of nutrients and pollutants and scenic beauty. The result will be a web of strategically connected land throughout our region. We believe that this will provide a transforming effect for the beauty, economic development, and natural resources of our region forever.