Ranchlands – Recreation – Forests
WHEN: April 2017
WHERE: Dillon, Montana at University of Montana Western
We brought together some 100 stakeholders for the High Divide Collaborative workshops that focused on three goals that we had not yet explored in depth: ranchlands, recreation, and forested lands. Teams of stakeholders helped us formulate the workshop agenda, and our Landscape Conservation Design science team pulled together spatial data to depict current conditions. We updated our partners on connectivity analysis that is arising from a deeper partnership with the state wildlife agencies wherein we are using some incredible new empirical data to model connectivity habitats-models that we will share with stakeholders as information to inform decision making.
WORKSHOP FOCUS
In the past we met to talk about 4 of our 8 goals: wildlife connectivity, water conservation, sage land conservation, and wildfire threats to our communities and conservation of lands in the Wildland Urban interface to protect those communities.
In April, we took a deeper look into 3 more of our goals:
- Conservation of the working ranchlands that are central to High Divide communities, economy and way of life,
- Conservation of recreation resources and opportunities on land and water in the High Divide, and
- Conservation of healthy forested lands for their ecological, social and economic values.
READ THE REPORT HERE