Every three years, the California Landscape Stewardship Network’s Steering Committee looks at where the Network has been successful, assesses current needs and opportunities, and charts a course forward through a new strategic roadmap. This process relies on input from:

• Targeted interviews with Steering Committee members and subset of Network partners and advisers
• A Network-wide survey of current participants
• Facilitated, in-depth Steering Committee discussions about key issues

Read the 2024 - 2026 strategic roadmap here. 

Network Focal Areas

From 2024 to 2026, the CLSN will focus its efforts on three multi-faceted, interrelated, and emergent topics that build upon our strengths while allowing us to continue to be nimble and adaptive to opportunities and needs that arise from our community of practice. 

1. Connecting collaborative practitioners in ways that inform, equip, and empower 

We will regularly organize virtual and in-person convenings to share best available practices, models, and insights into the unique challenges of working in partnerships. These will include annual statewide convenings, peer exchange among those coordinating regional collaboratives, and topic-based workshops. Rich discussions on a variety of topics will come from the collective experience of the members of the 30+ collaboratives that participate in the CLSN, including federal, state, and Tribal governments, as well as community-based organizations, nonprofits, and private landowners. 

2. Advancing solutions to systemic barriers that limit collaborative stewardship action 

We will identify ways to shift paradigms in ways that soften barriers to and increase capacity for landscape-scale collaboration as well as provide research-based resources that support the evolution of collaborative stewardship policy and practice.

3. Supporting the landscape stewardship movement in a way that leads with equity, justice, and inclusion 

We will engage with our community of practice with a spirit of allyship as well as with resources to help promote equity, justice, and inclusion, and will foster a culture of joy in this work by acknowledging where we are healing severed connections. 

None of the goodness borne out of connectivity are possible without first fostering deep relationships, and a need for broader relationships is at the heart of our approach for 2024 – 2026. Collaboration is how we move beyond land protection toward caring for our social and ecological systems in ways that are democratic and durable. We will continue the work of broad participation, inclusivity, and access to bring the power of collective impact through networks to life.