Allies & Affiliated Partner OrganizationsConnecting across boundaries, partnerships inspire innovation. Below we identify allied organizations (mostly private, nongovernmental) that are either service centers or alliances bridging multiple states and that offer help in protecting important environmental resources.
The following links drop you down to categories of partnerships-- Land & Forest Conservation; Water Protection:
American Forest Foundation (www.forestfoundation.org ) unites and informs owners of privately held forestlands to keep forests healthy and to educate the next generation to be prepared for conserving and protecting America's forests and ecological resources. AFF believes that family forest owners --the largest group of forestland holders in the U.S. (22 million families own nearly 282 million acres of forestland nationwide)--are key to protecting the values and benefits coming from well-managed forests. AFF supplies helpful guidance to private forestland owners and operates a FREE web-based resource for forestland owners who want to apply good forest, land, water, and wildlife conservation practices on their property. AFF also promotes Project Learning Tree and other youth environmental education programs.
American Rivers (www.AmericanRivers.org) is a national river conservation and public policy advocacy organization with staff positioned across the South. It works to restore healthy rivers, ensure clean drinking water supplies, revitalize fish and other aquatic wildlife habitats, improve water-based recreation, lead local campaigns to clean waterways, identify America's most endangered rivers, improve community flood protection, create river "blue trails," save remaining wild, scenic and free-flowing rivers, remove unnecessary dams, and leave a legacy of healthy rivers for future generations. Four of the 10 most endangered rivers currently identified by American Rivers are located in the southern U.S.: the Holston River (VA/TN), Harpeth River (TN), Edisto River (SC), and Pearl River (MS). Appalachian Trail: a landscape conservation approach The nonprofit Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the National Park Service are focused on conserving the broader landscapes of the Appalachian Mountains associated with the iconic Appalachian Trail. Although the AT footpath, stretching 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, is protected, many sections of its buffer are only 1,000 feet wide or less. This new effort would protect the broader ecological, cultural, and visual landscapes, conserving a treasured recreational experience, connecting the cultures of the eastern United States, north and south, and providing a critical ecological corridor while we still have time. Read more. The Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership received a major grant to work with communities to protect the lands, waters, and unique cultural features of the landscapes surrounding the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Read about the grant and learn more about the new Partnership in this video . Chesapeake Bay Conservation Partnership A partnership of over 90 agencies and nonprofits fosters collaborative action to conserve natural and cultural landscapes and safeguard a healthy environment and economy in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Partners work together across the watershed in 6 states and the District of Columbia to conserve and restore the health, heritage, natural assets, and economic value of this national treasure. The coalition has developed a shared conservation vision and priority system for the watershed. Read more here. Forest Stewardship Guild A national nonprofit association whose mission is to promote ecological forestry, or forest management that maintains or enhances the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems. More broadly, the Guild promotes wise forest stewardship. Current projects include:
Land Conservation Assistance Network, also known as LandCAN, and formerly the Resources First Foundation. LandCAN is changing its name as part of a deliberate strategy to emphasize the services, solutions, and tools provided for landowners, and energy conservation professionals and businesses dedicated to sustainable land conservation and management practices. LandCAN believes the future of our private lands across the 50 states is principally in the hands of private landowners and their advisors. LandCAN's goals are to assure the future of land conservation by helping landowners steward their lands, lakes, and rivers for conservation, endangered species support, sustainable agriculture and organic farming, and recreational tourism use. Read more here. (As part of its rebranding, the Conservation Tax Center is merging with LandCAN and all State Conservation Connections will become State LandCANs.) Land Trust Alliance (www.landtrustalliance.org) promotes voluntary land conservation nationwide and works with more than 1,100 nonprofit, local, and regional member land conservation organizations (including nearly 200 operating in the southern states) by providing them with information, skills development, and resources needed to conserve land and connect more people to the land. The Land Trust Alliance wants to make land conservation relevant to more people; increase the rate of land conservation; empower land trusts to be more resilient to challenges; and make land conservation programs as rigorous as possible. Partnership for Gulf Coast Land Conservation. This coalition of 25 nonprofit land conservation partner groups focused on environmental resource protection in the coastal region of the five states along the Gulf of Mexico was organized by the Land Trust Alliance in May 2011 with the hiring of two project co-coordinators - Elizabeth Barber and Julia Weaver. Over the past seven years, the partner organizations of the Gulf Partnership have increased the pace, quality, and permanence of land and water conservation across the region. The Gulf Partnership provides matching grants to its partner organizations through a Project Assistance Fund. The partners have invested over $226,000 in Project Assistance Funds to attract $53 million in land conservation investments, protecting more than 20,000 acres of coastal habitat. See a more extensive description on the Featured Partnership sidebar of this web page. The Gulf Partnership's WEBSITE makes it easy for anyone interested in protecting land and water resources in the Gulf Coast region to learn about the coalition's capacity building, communications, and advocacy programs. Partnership for Southern Forestland Conservation (www.pfsfc.org) is a coalition of more than 30 public and private organizations working to retain and increase large blocks of working forest in the South. A key goal of the Partnership is to work with Timber Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs) and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) to better understand partnership opportunities with these entities. Partnership projects include: * Gulf Forestry/Deepwater Horizon Settlement * Lower Mississippi River Restoration Rewilding Institute (www.rewilding.org) champions restoring and reconnecting natural landscapes and wildlife migration corridors. River Network (www.rivernetwork.org), a national river conservation organization with staff throughout the South, serves as a champion for clean and ample water, with the goal to protect and restore rivers and life-sustaining waters across America. It builds coalitions, organizational strength, and leadership among 2,000 local partner groups working to protect rivers and watersheds nationwide. The River Network's "2016 Trends Report on Our Water Our Future" includes important information about the diversity of the river and watershed community in the United States. The report stresses the need for river and watershed protection efforts to reflect the interests and the diversity of the communities being served. River Network recognizes that climate change is impacting rivers and the human communities living on rivers. River protection groups are partnering with vulnerable communities to reduce risks, build resiliency, and cope and adapt with flooding and other negative impacts. Read more here. River Network's Drinking Water Guide is a fine resource to learn about drinking water, its sources and systems, how to ensure safe-clean-affordable-available drinking water, and how climate change affects our water. Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (www.southeastaquatics.net) focuses on issues concerning management of threatened aquatic resources in the region (34 percent of fish species and 90 percent of native mussel species in the southeastern U.S. are designated as endangered, threatened, or of special concern). SARP was founded to be a catalyst and partners with others to protect, conserve, and restore aquatic resources and habitats in 14 states. Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) implements regional Conservation Blueprint [see more information below in Landscape Conservation section]. SECAS was initiated in 2011 as an interagency collaborative for regional conservation planning that focused on landscape-scale conservation to protect whole functioning ecological systems. This collaborative conservation planning initiative has designed a regional Conservation Blueprint and is actively expanding its use and implementation. See SECAS Statement of Purpose. The SECAS factsheet describes the background and guiding principles of SECAS in greater detail. For more information also read SECAS Futures Project. It is currently acting to implement five recommendations addressing SECAS governance by strengthening core processes, improving communications, and broadening engagement. Southeastern Partnership for Forests and Water (southeasternpartnership.org) is a collaborative effort to enhance forested watershed protection that benefits public water and local economies in the southeastern U.S. Its mission is to ensure healthy southeastern forested watersheds that provide safe, reliable drinking water through strong partnerships, collaboration, funding, and action. This project is jointly funded by the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities and by the US Forest Service. Goals include developing cooperative relationships among state and local agencies, forestry and conservation organizations, and other river and watershed protection associations to design pilot projects and funding to implement creative protection strategies in high priority watersheds. The 500-Year Forest Foundation (www.500yearforest.org ) is a Virginia-focused model that can be adopted by other forestland conservation organizations across the region interested in expanding landowner recognition and assistance programs. This nonprofit group provides a combination of technical and financial assistance to private owners of older-growth forests to assist them with forest stewardship and eradication of invasive plants. The Foundation enters into management cooperative agreements with owners, under permanent conservation easements and uses private grant funds to provide annual matching grants to member forest owners. The Foundation encourages "forests as laboratories" projects and works in collaboration with volunteers, consultants, independent contractors, and interns. US Endowment for Forestry and Communities (www.usendowment.org ) is a nonprofit, private organization based in Greenville, SC, dedicated to advancing the health, sustainability, and vitality of the nation's working forests and forest-reliant communities. The Endowment maintains the National Conservation Easement Database (www.conservationeasement.us )--a comprehensive overview of nearly 120,000 easements covering over 30 million acres nationwide. Waterkeeper Alliance (www.waterkeeper.org ) is a worldwide alliance of over 240 affiliate local waterkeeper organizations (sometimes known as riverkeepers or baykeepers), including more than 50 in the southern U.S. The Alliance is dedicated to protecting water quality through science, community organizing, and legal defense. Water Protection Network (www.waterprotectionnetwork.org ) is a national coalition of over 240 organizations working to ensure that the nation's federal water projects and policies are environmentally and economically sound. The Network is managed by the National Wildlife Federation, and establishes a collaborative voice for reforming national water policies and to influence federally sponsored projects and permits at the local level. WPN offers its member groups a free weekly e-newsletter and eligibility for assistance grants. World Wildlife Institute (www.WRI.org )is an international conservation organization providing many helpful resources for application in our region. Its publication on "Protecting Drinking Water Supplies at the Source" and review of collaborative investment strategies to protect watersheds is of great interest. WRI suggests that those concerned about assuring safe water supplies in the future can apply experiences and successful strategies drawn from 13 case examples from around the country (one of them in the southern U.S.--North Carolina's Upper Neuse River watershed protection partnership project). READ REPORT Biodiversity & Wildlife Conservation: Indiana bat, photo by Mark Gumbert
Kentucky Natural Lands Trust (KNLT) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Kentucky Ecological Services field office have worked together since 2008 to administer the Imperiled Bat Conservation Fund (IBCF), one of the most unique and innovative partnerships in the nation. Since its inception, the IBCF has generated and invested over $36,000,000 in land acquisition, stewardship, research, and other activities. The fund uses a combination of grant, mitigation, and federal discretionary funding to focus resources on bat, forest, and at-risk terrestrial species conservation in Kentucky. IBCF was initially created to provide recovery-focused conservation for the federally endangered Indiana bat, but more recently, funding has been directed toward landscape-scale efforts that will benefit Indiana bats and the recently listed Northern long-eared bat through continued acquisition and protection of forested bat habitat, habitat management and improvement, and focused research and monitoring efforts. READ MORE.
Conservation Fisheries ( www.conservationfisheries.org ) is a Knoxville, TN, based nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the aquatic biodiversity of Southern Appalachia's streams. In its fish hatchery many imperiled species of native fish are being saved and propagated. Conservation Fisheries work has been the subject of numerous articles and documentary films. We recommend watching the beautiful and fascinating "Hidden Rivers of the Southern Appalachians" documentary film, recently produced by Freshwaters Illustrated. (Watch excerpt trailers The Hidden World of Native Fish and The Hidden World of River Mussels). Discover Life In America (www.dlia.org) is a science and environmental education nonprofit organization focused on the ecosystems and biodiversity (estimated between 60-80,000 species of life) in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and surrounding areas. It supports the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory research project, and hopes to expand this first-of-its-kind comprehensive, long-term biodiversity inventory to other biodiversity "hotspots." Friends of Plant Conservation (www.ncplantfriends.org/) is a North Carolina nonprofit committed to increasing public awareness, understanding, and support of the state’s Plant Conservation Program (housed in the Plant Industry Division of the NC Department of Agriculture) whose mission is to protect the rare and native plant flora of the state, and invest funds in support of plant conservation program activities in North Carolina. Gulf Restoration Plan by National Audubon Society. The National Audubon Society in its extensive report titled "Audubon's Vision: Restoring the Gulf of Mexico for Birds and People," recommends an investment of more than $1.7 billion in habitat restoration and conservation efforts. The report highlights projects and programs critical to helping the region and its wildlife recover from devastating hurricanes, oil spills, and other environmental and human-made disasters. According to Audubon's then CEO David Yarnold, "The challenges are huge, but we have an enormous opportunity to save much of the Gulf Coast for both birds and people. We can’t afford to blow this." NatureServe (www.natureserve.org) represents a network of over 80 public and private natural heritage programs across the U.S. and leads efforts to provide scientific information, data and maps, tools and expertise to guide effective conservation actions and land use decisions to protect native animals, plants, and habitats. NatureServe is principal manager of the LandScope public database and tool for ecosystem-based conservation planning. It produces the NatureServe Explorer, an online encyclopedia of life, which includes data and maps of exemplary natural communities and habitats of rare and endangered species. Southeastern Partners in Plant Conservation is a collaboration bringing together government agencies, land managers, botanical gardens, university programs, and botanical experts to inform each other on best practices and topics relevant to rare plant conservation and to form a cohesive network of resources to support regional efforts for at-risk and listed plant species in the southeastern U.S. A meeting in the Atlanta Botanical Garden in March 2020 assembled representatives from many public and private conservation organizations and universities across the Southeast. A summary and recordings of the presentations is available at the SePPCon WEBSITE and videos. US Fish and Wildlife Service invites you to be a reader of its Fish and Wildlife News online magazine. Read About how the Service is creating a more Connected Constituency. Wetland Forests Protection Initiative (www.wetlandforests.org ) focuses on raising public awareness and increasing the scale and coordination of efforts to protect more of the threatened forests in the river bottomlands and wetland areas of the southern U.S. This coalition organized by the Dogwood Alliance, and its mission is to conserve, restore, and improve southern wetland forests through science-backed actions, diverse partnerships, and citizen and landowner engagement. The Wildlands Network (wildlandsnetwork.org/ ) pursues the vision of establishing four major corridors of protected and restored natural habitats connecting across the North American continent. This science-based solution is proposed in strategic response to what many recognize as the largely human-caused Sixth Great Extinction currently occurring. Its focus now is on devising the Western and Eastern Wildways corridors, including a connected system of conserved land linking 16 essential ecological core areas from Quebec, Canada, down the Appalachian mountains, on to restored and protected longleaf pine forests and coastal ecosystems in NC-SC-GA, and linking on to the eastern Gulf Coast and Florida Everglades. Wildlands Network also advocates for restoration of top carnivores to native ecosystems. Wildlife Habitat Council (www.wildlifehc.org) promotes and certifies habitat conservation and management on corporate lands through partnerships and education. The Council is supported by some of America's major landholding corporations. In 2016 the Council debuted a new certification program for wildlife habitat conservation practices on corporately owned and managed lands. Check out the WHC's Conservation Academy, with its many FREE educational webinars. WHC is promoting the wide use of the American Forest Foundation's Project Learning Tree educational program for America's youth. Landscape Conservation:The “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful” report issued early in the Biden Presidential administration lays out recommendations for “a ten-year, locally led campaign to conserve and restore the lands and waters on which we all depend.” The document asserts “a simple truth: that nature is essential to the health, well being and prosperity of every family and every community in America,” and it sets out eight principles for designing effective and equitable conservation programs. These principles—including pursuing a collaborative approach, ensuring that conservation benefits all Americans, recognizing the importance of privately owned working landscapes, and the use of science and traditional knowledge to guide decisions—are consistent with the values that the national Landscape Conservation Network brings to landscape conservation.
The Landscape Conservation Network recommends reading this compelling case that 21st Century conservation needs to be marked by collaboration at the landscape scale, and calls for a durable national conservation framework to support such efforts. In another new report, Build Back a Better National Landscape Conservation Framework, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation aims at just that—the report outlines recommendations to guide a framework to support and coordinate landscape conservation efforts across the country. A community of landscape conservation practitioners are part of a dialogue about devising a national framework that will meet the 21st Century conservation challenges we face—in ways that strengthen our connection to place, to one another, and to the communities in which we live. Large Landscape Conservation Practitioners' Network (c/o Center for Large Landscape Conservation ) is an alliance of individuals and organizations engaged in initiatives and promoting collaborations for conservation of large-scale landscapes. The Network for Landscape Conservation is the community of practice for professionals working to catalyze a landscape conservation approach and to achieve on-the-ground success. This collaborative of practitioners from private, public, non-profit, academic, and philanthropic sectors is focused on supporting and advancing the practice of landscape conservation. Their objectives are to
Living Landscape Observer (livinglandscapeobserver.net ) provides commentary and information on emerging fields of large landscape-scale conservation, historic preservation, and sustainable community development. The "living landscape" approach emphasizes preservation of a sense of place. See also the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation. National Heritage Areas Many (16 of 49) of the congressionally designated National Heritage Areas are located in the southern region of the U.S. Each area has been designated and authorized by act of Congress and possesses nationally significant natural, cultural, historic, or scenic resources. The Natural Heritage Areas (NHA) program is managed by the National Park Service, but they are not national park units. Each NHA has unique goals and is independently administered by nonprofit organizations or state agencies. All NHAs are involved with establishing public/private partnerships with collaborative plans and programs focused on economic development related to promoting tourism, outdoor recreation, and public education around the themes or features of the heritage areas. Collectively NHAs have leveraged more than $55 million in investments in regional economic development focused on natural and cultural heritage resources and tourism. Volunteers have committed over a million hours of service in support of the NHAs. The National Park Service assists the NHAs with technical and educational assistance. National Heritage Areas in the southern U.S.--- Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area Atchafalaya National Heritage Area Augusta Canal National Heritage Area Blue Ridge National Heritage Area Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area Cane River National Heritage Area Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor ** Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area Mississippi Hills National Heritage Area Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District South Carolina National Heritage Corridor Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area ** The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Pender County, North Carolina. The cultural heritage corridor overlaps with a portion of the East Coast Greenway, a 3,000-mile walking and biking route that runs through 15 states from Maine to Florida. In June 2020 NC Gov. Roy Cooper signed House Bill 130 into law, designating the East Coast Greenway as a unit of the North Carolina State Parks system and a North Carolina State Trail. The designation makes the greenway “eligible for a variety of funding mechanisms and other forms of support for trail planning and construction in North Carolina,” according to the East Coast Greenway Alliance. The Gullah Geechee Greenway/Blueway Heritage Trail project will be designed to intertwine outdoor activities, including walking, bicycling and paddling, with the history and culture of the Gullah Geechee, West Africans torn from their country and enslaved on plantations along the southern Atlantic Coast. The corridor links places of historic significance to the Gullah Geechee, telling stories of their lives on the plantations and in the coastal plains after abolition. Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) {also see description above in this section] was initiated by state agency members of the Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) and the federal interagency Southeast Natural Resource Leaders Group, with support from Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) and the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP). SECAS is intended to establish a shared, long-term vision for conserving and restoring lands and waters that sustain wildlife and fish populations and enhance human quality of life in the southeast U.S. and Caribbean. The primary product of SECAS is the Southeast Conservation Blueprint, which weaves together smaller subregional plans into one consistent map of important areas for conservation and restoration across the Southeast US and Caribbean. The Conservation Blueprint is being used and implemented in a wide variety of purposes. A recording of a 60-minute webinar explaining the SECAS is posted on YouTube. See the latest version of the Southeast Blueprint on the Southeast Region Conservation Planning Atlas.
See conservation planning resources furnished by SECAS: South Atlantic Conservation Planning Atlas South Atlantic Conservation Blueprint Southeast Conservation Planning Atlas Southeast Conservation Blueprint 
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The Power of Partnership
Partnerships between land trusts and their communities will be critical in the years ahead. Climate change is likely to exacerbate weather extremes: more frequent and higher intensity hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. In the Southeast and elsewhere, land trusts respond proactively to the effects of natural disasters and in mitigating their impacts. Here are some examples . . . . 
Photo by Bill Lancaster
Photo by Mike Dunn
The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land. Featured Partnerships
Photo by Chuck Roe
The Partnership for Gulf Coast Land Conservation is a coalition of local, regional, and national land conservation organizations (private non-governmental) that coalesced efforts in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe to conserve land critical to maintaining and restoring healthy ecosystems in the coastal region of the five states along the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Partnership’s mission is to increase the pace, quality, and permanence of voluntary land and water conservation in the Gulf of Mexico region. Member organizations work with private landowners and communities to protect the most important natural resources and landscapes that distinguish the Gulf Coast region. Since coming together for collaborative action in the immediate aftermath of the April 2010 catastrophic Deepwater Horizon drill rig explosion and resulting discharge of nearly 135 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and its shorelines, the more-than two dozen organizations composing the Gulf Partnership have protected thousands of acres of sensitive coastal habitat that helps restore the natural resources that were damaged by the oil spill. Partner organizations work with private landowners, local governments, and public natural resource agencies to conserve the land and waters that border the Gulf's rivers, bayous, estuaries, and wetlands. Protected areas help improve both the quality and quantity of water entering the Gulf. which in turn improves the health of the entire Gulf ecosystem. In the Deepwater Horizon aftermath, federal and state agencies worked with BP and the other responsible parties to establish three programs that allocate more than $15 billion to restore the economy and the environment of the Gulf of Mexico region: 1) Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund; 2) Gulf Restoration Trust Fund; and 3) NRDA Programmatic Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan. These programs have similar environmental restoration goals and have made restoring habitats and protecting natural resources as priorities. The Gulf Partnership land conservation organizations produced a comprehensive "Land Conservation Vision for the Gulf of Mexico Region" which presented a collaborative strategy identifying highest priority conservation focus areas in the region. The plan called for cooperative land conservation action to sustain and revive the region's ecosystems and environmentally-based economies. Members of the Gulf Partnership continue to benefit from frequent communications and information exchange, organizational capacity building, access to grant funds for designing land conservation projects, and combined advocacy for public policies and interface with local, state, and federal decision-makers responsible for oversight of environmental and economic recovery from the oil spill. The Gulf Partnership's Project Assistance Fund (PAF) program is a landscape-level approach to conservation that seeks to remove barriers to project development by aligning partner goals and resources to quicken the pace and permanence of land and water conservation while addressing upfront challenges and critical gaps in project execution. A matching grant program, the PAF is available to land trusts across the Gulf States to pay for preliminary costs before the purchase of land and conservation easements. These ‘due-diligence’ requirements range from appraisals, appraisal reviews, surveys, legal descriptions, title reviews, legal reviews, baseline documentation reports, recording fees, and environmental assessments, and ensure the Land Trust and the public are getting their money’s worth. The PAF funds up to $25,000 per award for due diligence-related activities that lead to the protection of conserved lands along the Gulf of Mexico coast. Through generous donations from the Knobloch Family Foundation, the Partnership has been able to make matching grants to land trusts to protect many beaches, marshes, and forested uplands across the region. Through 2023, the PAF Program has financed 26 PAF Projects (11 completed); 20,112 Acres Protected; and $14,790,593 leveraged in conservation value. For more details, and a list of all PAF projects, please visit the PAF program's WEBSITE. The Gulf Partnerships approach to conservation looks at a watershed-scale or landscape approach, focused on connecting and restoring a diversity of habitats for species and resource benefit while recognizing the economic importance and long history of silviculture across the region. Whether Tupelo swamps, coastal Mangroves, Longleaf Savannahs, or Hardwood Bottomlands, restoring ecological functioning habitats not only protects imperiled species but the communities that rely upon their health. The Gulf Partnership and its members assist landowners and the broader conservation community in identifying, developing, and facilitating reforestation projects. From site prep to planting to arranging volunteer planting events, dedicated to conserving our forested landscapes! Through 2023 the Partnership has raised $1,000,000 for Reforestation, planted 600,000 trees, and accomplished 25 reforestation projects. Large-scale Habitat Restoration in the Gulf More investments are underway for portions of the $20 billion settlement BP paid to federal and state governments for its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to be used to bring back vital habitat along the Gulf Coast. These investments will support restoration projects specifically aimed at bird populations that are still recovering from the oil spill. Trustees for Deepwater Horizon Restoration Funds, who are charged with restoring the Gulf after the BP oil disaster across all five Gulf states, recently announced nearly $100 million in new projects to ensure birds and other migratory wildlife are healthy and protected across the entire Gulf Coast. That includes almost $35 million specifically to support bird populations that are still recovering from the oil spill that began 11 years ago this month. On top of that wonderful news, Louisiana is also moving forward with a $2 billion project to restore the Mississippi River with its wetlands in Barataria Basin. These are huge investments in the Gulf’s ecosystems and wildlife, made possible through the $20 billion settlement BP paid to federal and state governments for its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 people and an estimated 1 million birds, and released 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over 87 days. Several of the projects selected for funding are included in National Audubon’s vision for restoring the Gulf of Mexico. READ MORE about the set of projects to understand how they’ll help birds and people on the Gulf Coast. 
Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council Hits Major Milestone: The Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council (RESTORE Council) announced in April 2024 that it has reached an important milestone: It has awarded over $1 Billion in funding for restoration activities across the Gulf Coast using funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement. “EPA is thrilled that the RESTORE Council has been able to invest $1 billion in Gulf Coast restoration and in the communities that call this national treasure home,” said Janet McCabe, EPA Deputy Administrator and RESTORE Council Chair. “These funds are giving local communities and habitats a second chance to grow and thrive and they will help ensure the long-term health and resilience of the Gulf Coast ecosystem.” The infographic above summarizes this investment.
Photo by Walker Golder
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Environmental Restoration and
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When despair for the world grows in me 
Photo by Walker Golder
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