Biodiversity Partnership

The Biodiversity Partnership is dedicated to promoting and supporting regional and statewide strategies to conserve biodiversity.

Wyman Creek, California. Photo by Bruce TaylorThe initiative has its roots in the Oregon Biodiversity Project, a collaborative effort begun in the mid-1990s that resulted in one of the nation's first statewide biodiversity assessments. The Oregon project provided an early model for an emerging new generation of regional and statewide conservation plans. The difficulties Defenders and its partners confronted in that pioneering effort also highlighted the need for a more effective way to share the growing body of practical knowledge and experience gained through similar conservation planning efforts in widely different settings across the country.

The Biodiversity Partnership is an attempt to bring together in one place a range of information about current broad-scale conservation planning efforts and the challenges involved in developing effective biodiversity conservation strategies.

Biodiversity Information
High-quality, useful information about the overall status and distribution of biodiversity needs to be readily accessible to support effective conservation plans. Several states have developed unique approaches to biodiversity information, and some have initiated citizen science programs. This section also features information on the Conservation Registry, one of Defenders' new planning tools.

Conservation Economics
The Conservation Economics section provides applied socio-economic research related to biodiversity wildlife habitat conservation. This activity includes three interrelated components: research, policy formulation, and project implementation. The section also provides research findings and policy recommendations with respect to the use of economic and institutional incentives for biodiversity conservation.

Habitat Conservation Basics
Habitat Conservation Basics features an interactive presentation on designing conservation networks. A subsection on habitat and sprawl highlights the opportunities and challenges associated with conserving land in developing landscapes. A subsection on habitat in agricultural landscapes summarizes issues unique to farmlands and profiles some landowners who have done an exceptional job conserving biodiversity. We also feature a subsection on managing habitat in reserved forests and lands managed for timber production.

Invasive Species
Competition from invasive species is second only to habitat loss as a cause for species endangerment. Many states have developed unique programs to address invasive species.

Incentives for Conservation
Because a great deal of important habitat and other elements of biodiversity are found on private land, a summary of incentive programs for private landowners at the state and federal level is provided, as well as in-depth studies of incentive programs for several states.

Oregon Biodiversity Project
The Oregon project is widely recognized as a model for biodiversity projects in other states. It began in the early 1990s among a small group of conservationists including Defenders of Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy and the Oregon Natural Heritage Program.