Conservation Planning, Monitoring and Adaptive Management, Conservation Training
Conservation Planning

Conservation planning provides a comprehensive, systematic and transparent approach for the identification of effective and efficient actions to conserve or restore key ecological resources. Conservation planning is a decision analysis tool that improves making optimal decisions in complex ecological and societal situations and identifies which solutions brings one closest to the objectives. Its systematic approach insures thoroughness, controls for bias, fosters clarity and understanding and establishes priorities. Additionally, conservation planning can identify the land and waters that actions will impact and develop measures for assessing the status of the key ecological resources and the effectiveness of the actions. Conservation planning can be used for any scale of project, from a small parcel of land to whole watersheds, ecological systems or governmental jurisdictions.

Rob Sutter was one of the developers of The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Action Planning (CAP) process and one of the leading planners in The Nature Conservancy. He is proficient in CAP and Conservation Measures Partnership’s Miradi software and has planning experience in terrestrial, karst, freshwater and marine systems, and with climate change adaptation. He is proficient with ecological models, situation diagrams and results chains. Most recently he has led CAP planning sessions for karst ecosystems of North America (2008), the poaching of wildlife in four East African countries (2008), headwater rivers of the Southeast United States (2007) and coastal and marine projects in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia (2006).

 
Ongoing Projects

Missouri River Ecosystem Recovery Plan

Rob Sutter has joined a team of conservation planners with Louis Berger, a consulting firm, to assist in developing a plan to restore, recover and mitigate the natural resources of the Missouri River. This plan, called the Missouri River Ecosystem Recovery Plan, is being managed by the Corps of Engineers and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The plan is using The Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Action Planning process to structure the planning and support the NEPA planning process. To date, Rob has assisted in a training session on conservation planning and has lead the selection of the terrestrial Focal Natural Resources.

 
Recently Completed Projects

Developing a Conservation Plan for a Large Scale Ecosystem

Over the last two years, Rob Sutter played a lead role (as one of the primary writers) on the steering committee that developed a region-wide conservation plan for longleaf pine, one of the most diverse and rarest forest ecosystems in the United States. The conservation plan was a multiagency effort, including numerous federal agencies (US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Defense), representatives from state wildlife agencies and private non-profit organizations (The Nature Conservancy, National Wild Turkey Federation). The plan established goals for conservation and developed broad strategies to address protection on public and private lands, fire management, ecosystem restoration, economic and financial incentives and adaptation to climate change. It also identified significant geographic areas and how to evaluate conservation outcomes.

Completed March 2009

Publication:
America’s Longleaf. 2009. Range-wide Conservation Plan for Longleaf Pine. www.americaslongleaf.org

 
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