Congratulations To Partnerscapes On Their Next Chapter!

One of the more innovative inter-organizational conservation partnerships of recent years is entering a new phase.  Ten years ago this October, staff from the National Wildlife Refuge Association approached an emerging group of private landowners focused on public-private partnerships with a tantalizing proposal.  The landowners working solely as volunteers had incorporated a new organization, Partners for Conservation (now Partnerscapes), to work on the communication and partnership-building aspects of sustaining working landscapes.  The National Wildlife Refuge Association was seeking to engage the broader human and natural landscapes containing wildlife refuges and proposed to assist in the development of Partners for Conservation by underwriting an executive director for the fledging group.

What followed was relationship building between the refuge association and the board of the landowner group which led to the hiring of the first Partners for Conservation executive director, Steve Jester, as an employee of the National Wildlife Refuge Association in May 2013.  Almost exactly 10 years after those first conversations the employment relationship is set to end and Partnerscapes is successfully moving into the future.

In 2016, Partners for Conservation’s annual gathering, Private Lands Partners Day, was held in the Everglades headwaters, a landscape of extreme importance to the National Wildlife Refuge Association, highlighting the high level of public-private partnership supporting a working landscape which in turn was supporting one of the newest units of the national wildlife refuge system. By 2017, Partners for Conservation was paying its own way including for its executive director Steve Jester, who still remained an employee of the refuge association. 

“The National Wildlife Refuge Association took a great leap of faith with us, backed with real dollars, and great patience,” said founding Partnerscapes Chairman Jim Stone, “I don’t know how long it would have taken us to get where we are without them, and for that, we will be forever grateful. 

“Partnerscapes has become a consistent, and frankly necessary, landowner voice for public-private conservation partnerships key to supporting landscapes that include our national wildlife refuges,” said National Wildlife Refuge Association President Geoffrey L.  Haskett “we are looking forward to the next chapter in this partnership story”.