In late 2016, six collaboratives spanning 750 miles across the state came together to form the California Landscape Stewardship Network. They included representatives from federal, state, and local agencies, nonprofits, academic institutions, and private land managers. While some had been working together decades, others were just emerging.

Although these six groups were the catalysts for its formation, today the Network engages with a wide range of agencies, Tribes, organizations, community-led groups, and individuals. Working this way means that the Network's impact goes beyond our members' scope, scale, or home geographies. Rather, we can help advance and amplify the work of stewarding our natural environment in the many places and ways it's expressed —from preserving biodiversity at the urban edge, to restoring publicly owned forests—and do so with a diversity of communities and partners across the state.

While we all come from different places, we share a deep commitment to the growing stewardship movement. By working together and listening to the communities who are connected to the land, we can better care for the places we love, enjoy, and depend upon, and continue to renew and sustain these places for current and future generations. We understand that our approach to conservation must evolve to be more inclusive and to support the leadership of under-resourced people and communities of color, who have long stewarded the land or been denied access to it. We can no longer work in isolation. We must leverage the tremendous power of partnerships to ensure that stewardship action drives the changes that both people and nature need.

Currently, the Network is guided by its Steering Committee, and specific topics are further explored and developed by Working Groups. The scope and scale of this emerging “network of networks” may continue to change as the landscape-scale stewardship movement evolves. Our vision and values and our 2024 - 2026 Strategic Roadmap will also help guide us into the future. 

Learn more about how you can get involved in what the Network is doing now.