Regional Conservation Planning

The Pine Barrens Partnership has launched a project to develop a Pine Barrens Guiding Principles and Conservation Vision Map for the Massachusetts Coastal Pine Barrens Ecoregion.

Through intensive public outreach and a series of hands-on workshops we will encourage the creation of an inspiring vision and a set of guiding principles for protecting the entire Massachusetts Coastal Pine Barrens ecosystem.

A key to our success will be a high level of engagement of the public in this process, understanding that without their participation our ultimate goals of restoration, preservation, and protection will be limited to areas already prescribed for conservation.

We will not simply gather data. We will head out into the community and engage residents and visitors where they live: the parks, malls, recreational areas, tourist attractions and the like within our ecosystem.

At the same time we will reach out to those segments of the public that have already placed a specific value on the land: indigenous peoples, foresters, hunters, fishermen, historians and others.

We will point out where the environmental values of both the public and the conservation community intersect – and by doing so marry one to the other.

With a "values" layer in place, we will move to engage the conservation community through a series of workshops focused on identifying our most prized natural resources, creating cultural and environmental overlays and adding wildlife and species considerations – each layer building upon the next.

Our Partnerships' well-rounded steering committee – which includes restoration ecologists, climatologists, planners and foresters – will be key participants in this phase, but the public and every established conservation organization in the ecoregion will be encouraged to continue to participate.

Our ultimate goal is to establish an ecosystem-wide conservation context—represented by the Pine Barrens Guiding Principles and Conservation Vision Map – through which decision makers at every level can guide future development, un-development, conservation projects and land protection initiatives.