Background:

The Land Trust Alliance, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created this online resource to help foster networking among organizations focused on advancing coastal conservation. To help facilitate initial networking, stakeholders held a series of coastal conservation meetings during the National Land Conservation Conference: Rally and Coastal Zone conferences in 2004 and 2005. At these meetings, coastal leaders discussed potential partnerships, funding sources (new and creative), and avenues to further support coastal conservation. From these meetings emerged a consensus interest in strengthening connections among existing groups and efforts.   

• National Land Conservation Conference: Rally 2004
• First convening of approximately 40 coastal leaders including federal, state, and local coastal managers and coastal land trusts from across the nation
• Goal was to create a forum to help coastal land trusts, coastal conservation groups, and state coastal managers network and discuss issues and needs
  
• Coastal Zone 05
• This gathering was a follow up to the initial Rally 2004 meeting
• This session focused discussion on the need to get proactive and aggressive to ensure consistent funding options for coastal conservation. Highlighted needs included:
• Identifying existing funding such as the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program (CELCP), securing these resources, and working to increase funding levels
• Identifying success stories for creative uses of funding for conservation (i.e., taxes on new home sales to fund conservation efforts)
• Developing a consistent coastal conservation message
• Utilizing a diverse network of coastal (focused) organizations and agencies to proactively advance coastal conservation

• National Land Conservation Conference: Rally 2005
• A third meeting was held during Rally 2005. The focus of the meeting was to use small work groups to define strategic priorities and next steps for the following:
• Exploring links between coastal conservation and hazard mitigation and the role of the land trust community
• Advancing coastal conservation funding and policy
• Creating a network for communication among the coastal conservation community
• This group brainstormed an extensive list of strategies and actions. Throughout all of the discussions, there was a need to develop a forum to share information on a variety of issues. Through support from the Land Trust Alliance, TNC, and NOAA’s Coastal Services Center, the Coastal Conservation Networking online resource was created and launched.

We welcome your comments! Please let us know what resources and information would be most useful to have on this site. Contact brooke.chakides@noaa.gov.