The RCP Network

People across the region are banding together in Regional Conservation Partnerships (RCPs) - sometimes called woodland councils - to increase the pace and scale of land protection. This is the exciting new face of conservation in New England.

Click here to join this New England network of large landscape collaborative conservation practitioners.

Click here to download our new summary, "Regional Conservation Partnerships: The New Face of Conservation in New England."

What are RCPs?

RCPs are generally informal networks of people representing private and public organizations and agencies that work together to implement a shared, long-term conservation vision across town and sometimes state boundaries. Check out our interactive on-line map of RCPs. You may need to download Microsoft's Silverlight 5 in order to view the map.  This is a free plug-in that may be downloaded here.

In the 1990s, there were 2-5 such partnerships; today there are upwards of thirty. The diverse members of RCPs roll up their sleeves and work together to create expansive networks, knit together partner agendas and activities, build trust, and craft and implement shared conservation strategies – and the end result is accelerated and community-informed conservation. Today, RCPs are actively working on more than 50% of New England's forested landscape.

The rapid growth of RCPs represents a new generation of Yankee ingenuity - a response to a regional landscape dominated by a patchwork of small private land ownerships under increasing development pressure and the need for innovative new approaches to achieve sound stewardship and timely conservation.  RCPs represent the strategic, collaborative conservation at multiple scales of land and community that it will take to conserve the forested landscapes of New England for the generations that follow.