A New Event to Facilitate Conservation Stewardship  

At Virginia Working Landscapes (VWL), we strongly believe that a tenet of conservation is sharing information and offering opportunities to facilitate connections. Our team is consistently looking for new and improved ways to offer those opportunities to our community. As such, we launched the Virginia Grassland Bird Initiative (VGBI) in collaboration with The Piedmont Environmental Council in 2021 to combine expertise, strategies, and capacity to amplify local conservation. Soon after, we brought in American Farmland Trust and Quail Forever as lead partners. 

After exploring effective outreach strategies for conservation implementation, the VGBI team came together with partners from the Shenandoah Valley Conservation Collaborative to design a new type of outreach event. Our goal was to connect landowners with their local “conservation specialists,” those working in the region as technical service providers (TSPs), researchers, land trust representatives, and team members on conservation NGOs. By connecting conservation specialists with landowners, we can introduce them to the full suite of (technical and financial) resources, knowledge, and programs available to them for managing their own land. 

Conservation Speed Dating  

Every landowner has the potential to be a steward for biodiversity. And each parcel of land has its own opportunities and needs. These workshops are designed to give individualized feedback from the conservation specialists to each landowner or farmer to catalyze both short- and long-term conservation action on working landscapes. 

We’ve been calling these events “Conservation Speed-Dating Workshops.” Landowners and farmers pre-register and upon arrival, are provided large, hard-copy maps of their properties. The conservation specialists then spend roughly 10 minutes consulting and brainstorming with each landowner, before shifting to the next landowner. The map serves as a focal point for discussing conservation practices specific to each unique landscape. The landowners can draw on the map and have space to jot down ideas throughout the discussion. The map also includes a list of contact information for the conservation specialists, so as to facilitate fast and easy follow-up after the event.  

VWL’s Justin Proctor has now coordinated four of these workshops and is really impressed with their lasting impact. “The large property maps are the golden ticket”, he explains. “I’ve visited landowners more than six months after they have attended one of these events and they still have their maps displayed and are continuing to reference them when talking about new management ideas they want to pursue.” 

“I’ve visited landowners more than six months after they have attended one of these events and they still have their maps displayed and are continuing to reference them when talking about new management ideas they want to pursue.” 

Justin Proctor

And the landowners and farmers who participate can do more than just dream of possibilities; they can really take action. Ultimately, participants leave with an informative and inspirational roadmap for adding more conservation practices to their landscapes and operations. They are armed with the knowledge of who to follow up with and what incentive opportunities and cost-share programs are available to support them. Many conservation efforts are in private landowners’ hands, and these events are facilitating a conservation legacy throughout the region.  

Photos by Brooke McDonough