FY2023The High Divide is a large, ecologically diverse, rural geography that demands coordinated conservation efforts from landowners, Tribal partners, NGOs, and agencies. The Landscape Conservation Design (LCD) provides a framework to coordinate management decisions and direct on-the-ground action based on partner input. The LCD process culminates in two deliverables: a spatial design and a long-term strategy design. Together, these deliverables will be available to those who live and work in the High Divide region to support conservation advocacy, planning, and funding efforts. Additionally, the spatial design will be publicly accessible for download and can be further refined to support local project prioritization. The LCD, particularly in the High Divide, is essential to coordinating conservation action across the landscape. Long-term, the High Divide Collaborative will serve as a convening implementation body ensuring the LCD contributes to meaningful and measurable socio-ecological outcomes in this key landscape.
FY2021Working with the High Divide Collaborative, a regional partnership of landowners, watershed groups, state and federal agencies and local officials, FWS IR5/7 Science Applications is initiating a Landscape Conservation Design in this area of the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana. The mixed-ownership landscape of the High Divide is a pivotal connectivity zone for multiple at-risk species like grizzly bear and wolverine and supports some of the longest ungulate migratory routes in North America. The High Divide sits at a precipice of change: climate and land uses are shifting rapidly, and stakeholders recognize the importance of collaborating developing a conservation vision. The Design ($25,000 in FY21) is intended to be science-supported and data rich but, most importantly, outcomes will be driven by the people involved. Ultimately, we endeavor to co-produce a roadmap that identifies how to retain social and ecological resilience through public-private partnerships. (Applicable MFAs: At-Risk Species: Science Support; Landscape; Collaborative Conservation; Data Management)
FY2022The High Divide region located in eastern Idaho and western Montana, covers approximately 138,000 km2, contains the headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia watersheds and is vital for maintaining current and potential connectivity across privately owned lands between the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Central Idaho Wilderness, and the Crown of the Continent ecosystem. The High Divide collaborative has successfully worked to protect and sustain spawning habitat for anadromous fish from the Pacific Ocean, the regions outstanding opportunities for outdoor recreation, and its working ranchlands in a region susceptible to entrenched, polarized views on conservation. The Landscape Conservation Design process provides a framework to continue to bring many of these seemingly opposing interests together over a common concern for the High Divide to produce a shared, long-term, strategic landscape vision that ensures people living and working in the region can take action that will be sustained by the whole community. Without it, conservation endeavors would be disjointed between interest groups, and would most likely not have the input of the local communities, ultimately leading to patchwork and thus ineffective conservation efforts.
