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The Conservation Fund’s strategic conservation services use a green infrastructure planning approach—simultaneously focusing on the best lands to conserve and the best lands to accommodate development and human infrastructure—to help communities, state and federal agencies, and businesses balance environmental and economic goals through strategies that lead to smarter, sustainable land use.

Strategic conservation recognizes that limited resources are available to identify and protect the lands most suitable for conservation and that competing values, needs and opportunities must be evaluated to develop the most efficient and effective land conservation strategies.

Every community is unique; that's why we provide customized services. The Fund draws from its strategic conservation toolkit to help corporations, transportation agencies, military services, city and county elected officials, regional and watershed organizations, natural resource agencies and nonprofits design comprehensive and customized strategies that balance land protection and development.

In Focus: NiSource Implementation Plan

The Conservation Fund successfully completed a project supported by a Section 6 Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund grant entitled “Determining Mitigation Needs for NiSource Natural Gas Transmission Facilities—Implementation of the Multi-Species Habitat Conservation Plan (MSHCP).” As a complementary effort to NiSource’s development of a MSHCP, the Fund developed a geographic ecosystem-based decision support framework that helps find the best locations for mitigation for impacted federal listed species addressed by the MSHCP. This transparent, defensible decision-making process for selecting mitigation projects serves as a model for future strategic mitigation efforts to harmonize green and gray infrastructure. Learn more about the NiSource project.

The Fund produced a 15-page implementation plan that is available for download as a PDF.

The Fund’s Strategic Conservation services include:

• Strategic conservation guidance: Consultation to solve complex conservation planning questions and to design effective conservation strategies that foster collaboration and leverage available resources.
• GIS modeling and mapping: Compilation and synthesis of data to develop high-quality cartographic products and design conservation databases and tools that support decision making and resource allocation.
• Optimization Modeling: Our successful new tool allows conservation leaders to evaluate potential projects for the best dollar value. By turning data—project costs, benefits, budget constraints—into a user-friendly spreadsheet, our optimization program enables conservationists to “optimize” conservation decisions. Click here to read more.
• Green infrastructure plans: Development of comprehensive green infrastructure plans that identify community priorities and goals, inventory current community assets, map green space networks, develop strategies for implementation, and build capacity for communities to achieve their conservation visions.
• Decision support tool design and implementation: Integrate data, knowledge and analyses (e.g. ecosystem services, optimization, suitability analysis) to support land use decision making and prudent use of resources.
• Mitigation support: Identify and evaluate mitigation opportunities for agencies and business organizations from Habitat Conservation Plans, transportation improvement projects, military compatible- use buffer programs and pipeline/transmission/energy corridors.

Project Profiles:

Click here for a list of strategic conservation projects.