Resources Library

Meeting notes, including summaries of speaker remarks and small group discussions, from the Better, Stronger, Faster roll-out at the UC Davis Mondavi Center on December 18, 2019.

Over the course of 2018-19, many of you approached the California Department Fish and Wildlife separately or in small groups to discuss improvements to our processes. The Department wants to share with you our thinking on reforms to help make our work “better, stronger, and faster.” We would like your feedback on improvements to our processes.

Fundamental to understanding how to manage and steward the natural world, raise awareness, or inspire action is being able to describe how your resources are faring and what needs intervention, and to do so in a credible and compelling way.

One way that natural resource-based agencies, organizations, or partnerships may choose to do this is through an assessment of the state of their resources. While these “ecological health assessments” are often initially developed to create a baseline against which future change can be measured, they can also focus management priorities, educate the public, generate action, and/or increase financial or political support.

The process described here is based on what we did for Mt. Tamalpais. This is one approach you can use, but because every effort will be different, we have tried to make the process scalable—describing a more comprehensive and involved method followed by possible alternative approaches. Each reader will need to assess how, or if, to apply this advice to their own project. That said, we have called out key decision points for elements we feel are truly fundamental, no matter what approach you choose to take.

This paper identifies priority actions that California Governor Gavin Newsom's Administration can take to protect our parks, public lands, and waterways for the enjoyment of current and future generations.

This document summarizes the key findings from a recently commissioned case study exploring barriers to and strategies for improving capacity for landscape-scale stewardship networks. This summary, prepared by the Steering Committee for the California Landscape Stewardship Network, includes direct excerpts from the case study as well as paraphrased findings.

A companion letter to the Resources Legacy Fund's policy recommendations to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

This document provides examples of how two national reports support or add to the findings of the California Landscape Stewardship Network's Capacity Building for Collaboration case study.

Wildfire. Drought. Flooding. Species extinction. Climate change. California faces grave threats that require bold, immediate action. An essential part of any solution is to restore and proactively manage California’s lands and natural resources at a scale and pace sufficient to result in meaningful benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to help catalyze new conversations and strategies to reduce persistent barriers to environmental stewardship, conservation and restoration of California’s lands that are unintended consequences of essential environmental regulations. It summarizes and assesses key advances in addressing these barriers—including legislative and policy approaches as well as approaches based on coordination, collaboration, and trust building—and includes recommended next steps.

This white paper includes a problem statement, key findings (p. 3), assessment of recent efforts (p.3), models outside the field of conservation (p.17), and conclusions and recommended next steps (p.19).

How many times have you heard someone say "we can't fundraise for stewardship?" If that's how we think about stewardship, that's how it will be. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right.”

The goal of this Kit is to enable anyone who wants to prioritize, value, and fund the work of taking care of the land to change the narrative about stewardship. To move away from "it can't be funded" to "it is essential that we fund and prioritize it" while staying grounded in our values, impacts, and stories.