Creating The Landscape Partnership
Building revolutionary, resilient hubs of conservation knowledge.
In 2009, the Obama administration transformed the nation’s environmental conservation strategy through the creation of the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs). The country was divided into 22 LCCs that organized conservation efforts by region, marking a shift from traditional local and single-species conservation toward a more collaborative and comprehensive scale. Until this point, the country’s conservation data was stored in a highly centralized, inaccessible Oracle machine in Washington DC. The LCCs revolutionized the management of this data by regionalizing it, and making it widely accessible. Overnight, this newly public data needed host platforms that would enable all relevant parties to access it.
The directors of both the North Atlantic and Appalacian LCCs hired Ferguson Lynch to build new software to host the data for those regions. With the Fish and Wildlife service as the fiscal agent behind the project, FL created a content management system (CMS). This community web portal executed the vision of the LCC model by opening lines of communication and streamlining access to the tools and data needed to address environmental threats beyond the scope of any one agency. The portal delivered news about the LCCs’ ongoing projects, products, and publications to members, partners, and the general public. It allowed stakeholders to upload and store data and resources, search for expertise through a scientific expert’s database, join private workgroup spaces, coordinate tasks, and communicate with colleagues.
In 2019, the LCC regional models were discontinued. Ferguson Lynch worked with program managers and science coordinators from the Fish and Wildlife service, USDA NRCS, and myriad NGO partners continue this communication hub and trove of research publications, datasets, webinars, and factsheets. Through migrating and combining content from the North Atlantic and Appalachian LCCs, along with collaborating partners the Landscape Partnership was born.
Today, The Landscape Partnership stands strong as an enterprise platform and operational tool where landowners and professionals from any agency, organization or industry can find and share conservation information. The platform hosts the online learning materials, news about activities and newly funded projects, and access to technical experts that were present on the original portal, as well as a variety of new decision-support tools and GIS mapping products available for public use. With a diversified group of backers and a group of stakeholders that has grown over ten years, this iteration of the platform embodies a resilient evolution of the original LCC vision.