Global Land Conservation Practice

This course provides an overview of the history, philosophical origins, tools, strategies, and practice of land conservation around the world. We begin with the historical overview of changing attitudes towards the natural world, as humans moved from unfettered exploitation to a gradual recognition of resource scarcity to taking steps to protect land, species, and habitats. The sweep of our historical overview ranges from the sacred groves of India to the Calakmul Bioreserve in Mexico to the New York City watershed. We review the growth of the conservation movement in the United States, which encompasses visionary but flawed leaders like John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gifford Pinchot, as well as Indigenous perceptions of the natural environment. We also examine the globally influential US trend of creating public parks, forests, and nature preserves, including emblematic landscapes like the Boston Common, Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks, and the Adirondack State Forest Preserve. Our focus then shifts to what has become one of the best-kept secrets in conservation—the growth, effectiveness, and practicality of private land conservation—which, as it increases in the size of the properties being protected, often includes public-private partnerships. We discuss the practices of land trusts in the US and also address rapidly expanding private lands conservation initiatives around the world. The course is organized around law and policy, conservation priorities, and finance. Within these three broad areas, topics include land conservation as a response to scarcity; north-south and east-west conservation needs, responses, and sometimes conflicts; public and private protected areas and strategies; emblematic and historic land conservation projects, trends, and achievements; environmental advocacy and its relationship to land conservation; wild lands and urban conservation; the critical role of science in land conservation, including strategic conservation planning, land protection criteria, protected area design, project implementation, and long-term land stewardship; land conservation in Indigenous regions and communities; the dramatic growth of private lands conservation from the US to Australia; innovative land conservation finance tools and strategies; land conservation in the era of climate change; and land conservation as a professional discipline.