A central challenge of working at the many different scales of the Crown of the Continent is the number of boundaries that exist across the landscape.
Applications of network governance at the Crown of the Continent
The Crown of the Continent is a vast, unique region, with its 18 million acres stretching from Montana to across the Canadian border and holding one of the largest untouched landscapes in North America. It includes the United States’ Glacier National Park and Canada’s adjacent Waterton Lake’s National Park, many different ecosystems and huge swaths of public lands. More than 100 organizations, government agencies and partnerships, amidst two countries and seven tribal nations, manage the land.
Editor’s Note: Read Patrick Bixler’s introduction to North American models of network governance in a previous post.
A central challenge of working at the many different scales of the Crown of the Continent is the number of boundaries that exist across the landscape. While these boundaries delineate ownership and management authority, they also divide disparate cultures, attitudes, goals, and values. Of course, the most significant borders are between Nations – Canada and the U.S. must work together, along with the seven Tribal Nations in the region. But challenges within the boundaries of each of these categorizations of Nations are also significant. In the U.S., not only are there differing management priorities within the U.S. federal land management agencies, there are also different state and local land management agencies to consider as well. Private landowners come in the form of huge industrial tracts that may be logging or mining, as well as working family ranches with agricultural production as the priority.
To bring together these numerous stakeholders and help keep the region intact, the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent emerged as an ongoing forum to bring together people with diverse needs and interests. The group’s use of two conservation strategies – large landscape conservation and network governance – has enabled it to help successfully and collaboratively manage the crown’s land, water, and wildlife resources.
The Crown of the Continent is a large swath of largely wild land, spanning the mid-northwestern United States and southern Canada. Map provided by the Crown Managers Partnership.
The Roundtable provides a unique opportunity to connect people that share a common commitment to the culture, communities, and conservation values of the region. Even though they do not have jurisdictional authority, some of the loudest voices heard in land management decisions are those of the non-profit conservation groups. Among these organizations are strong differences in perspective about strategies and goals for conserving and managing the land.
Such divisions can challenge efforts that seek to find common ground and coordination among land managers. People who care about the Crown and its future are increasingly looking to bridge these jurisdictional and cultural barriers to advance collective problem solving and collective action across scales. The Roundtable should be viewed as a large-scale neighborhood association that promotes conversation and coordinated land stewardship. In an era when people and communities struggle for cohesion, the Roundtable provides the connective tissue for local and regional sustainability.
A North American movement
The Roundtable is just one example of this approach in North America. There are several other initiatives emerging across the continent, including:
The Northwest Boreal Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NWB LCC): Catalyzed by a United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) initiative, the NWB LCC formed in 2012. The NWB LCC seeks to engage scientists, public land managers, tribes and First Nations, and government officials across a 330 million acre landscape that includes South-central and Interior Alaska, most of the Yukon Territory, the northern portion of British Columbia, and a small part of the Northwest Territories. Given the broad geographic expanse and major shared conservation challenges – climate change, biodiversity and wildlife connectivity, and cultural resources – the NWB LCC understands the need and importance of taking a network approach to communicating and coordinating efforts.
Chicago Wilderness: A regional alliance of more than 250 organizations, Chicago Wilderness was launched in 1996 in response to the dramatic decrease of naturally occurring ecosystems throughout Illinois. Thirty-four organizations, including state, local, and federal agencies, joined forces to restore and improve the biodiversity of the Chicago area. Today, this regional alliance works to improve the quality of life of residents and to preserve the naturally occurring lands and waters in the region through a variety of programs and activities.
Adapting lessons learned for more flexible applications of the landscape approach
We have learned that there is no one-size-fits-all model for addressing natural resource and environmental problems, and we encourage practitioners to match the processes of governance to the particular problems, issues, or opportunities they are addressing. We invite scholars to build partnerships with those participating in such initiatives and to engage in research, teaching, and public outreach that advance participatory models of governance at relevant scales.
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Patrick Bixler is a Research Scientist at the Institute of Renewable Natural Resources and a Lecturer for the Applied Biodiversity Science program at Texas A&M University.
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