collaboratories:
conservation roadmap

Our Collaboratories co-produce durable conservation solutions by connecting science, management, and policy with local action.

Our Conservation Roadmap Collaboratory is working to shift federal conservation priorities away from approaches that entrench division, and toward strategies that build on historical gains with more flexible, durable, and collaborative opportunities.

Conservation is at a critical juncture. The urgency around curbing biodiversity loss and climate change has never been greater, yet many of today’s policy approaches alienate would-be allies and deepen red-blue and urban-rural divides, even as most Americans support conservation broadly.

As part of the Conservation Roadmap Collaboratory, the Stone Center is co-creating a series of publications and federal policy recommendations to help translate the latest research on durability into action. Read on for our latest updates.

Publications

Durability by Design

Lessons on How to Design Conservation Policies, Programs, and Projects That Survive Political Change

Authored by Robert Bonnie, former United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Undersecretary & Stone Center Distinguished Scholar

joshua trees

Background

This paper is published by the U.S. Nature Initiative as part of its American Nature Strategy. As new federal administrations take office, Bonnie’s paper highlights that the ensuing political whiplash forces conservation groups and funders to spend scarce resources defending previous wins instead of investing in future opportunities.

Bonnie argues that this isn’t just a product of partisan polarization; it’s also a product of the choices that conservation advocates make about whom they engage, how they build coalitions, and how they design programs for implementation. In short: durability must be designed.

Key Findings

In order to design durable federal conservation strategies, Bonnie recommends four key strategies:

  1. Lead with shared values and economic benefits. Americans across the political spectrum support clean water, thriving wildlife, and access to the outdoors. Durable conservation starts with shared values, and is strengthened when reinforced by their economic benefits.
  2. Build broad, bipartisan coalitions and expect wins to take time. A coalition of environmental groups and officials from one party can win an initial fight, but it may not survive a change in administration. The successes that endure, like Idaho’s fifteen-year Boulder–White Clouds campaign, were built deliberately with credible, cross-partisan champions, genuine input from affected communities, and sustained investment in relationships and leadership.
  3. Design policy to be structurally durable. Even a strong coalition can’t protect a policy that’s poorly conceived or disconnected from local economics. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative, the Sage Grouse Initiative, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund succeed because they’ve increased bipartisan support over time, which makes reversal politically costly.
  4. Plan for implementation. Policies and coalitions can be undone by failure to plan for staffing, funding, and institutional infrastructure. The Blackfoot Challenge in Montana shows what durable implementation looks like: community-rooted, funded from diverse public and private sources, and independent of any single political champion.

We’re grateful to the US Nature Initiative for partnering on this release, and to the 20+ practitioners and policymakers who shared their experience to make this paper possible.

Read the full paper to explore the complete case studies and findings.