For nearly 60 years, The Nature Conservancy has successfully worked to protect important places harborin​g rich species and habitats. Yet despite its many notable accomplishments, the conservation challenges posed by large-scale threats, such as climate change, require a fresh look at how conservation assessments and strategies are carried out. Going beyond traditional project-by-project and site-based conservation actions, The Nature Conservancy takes a "whole system" approach to conserve nature and its benefits in the future. 

 

Using the work developed by the Conservancy’s Eastern Division Science office, the Central Appalachians Program has identified a ‘Resilient, Connected Conservation Network’ that captures factors such as the biophysical settings, landscape intactness and permeability, and large-scale ecological systems that sustain the region's high levels of biodiversity. We focus our conservation strategies on the most resilient places in this ‘network’ of forests and freshwater systems, protecting the largest suite of species and habitats even in the face of large-scale, climate-induced change, and conserving stages for movement and adaptation into the future.