History
In 1994, The Wildlands Project (TWP) identified the southeastern United States as a pilot region of vital ecological significance. The Southeast Wildlands Project (SEWP) evolved out of a vision-mapping workshop TWP subsequently held at Wakulla Springs, Florida on January 20-22, 1995.
The Regional Steering Committee selected at the Wakulla Springs workshop held an organizational meeting at the Coastal Plains Institute in Tallahassee on September 30, 1995. The consensus was that TWP's most valuable role here would be to act as a catalyst to initiate statewide planning of natural area networks in each of the southeastern states. The Coastal Plains Institute and Conway Conservation offered to provide institutional and administrative support for wildlands work in the region.
Florida was identified as a model for what needed to be accomplished in the other states. A charette held there in 1991 produced preliminary maps that have served as a basis for numerous integrated conservation efforts, guided a $300-million-a-year state land acquisition program, spawned innovative public-private land conservation efforts, and initiated processes now culminating in statewide greenway planning oriented around preservation of core ecological reserves and linkages.
The committee decided that the Southeast Wildlands Project's first effort should be to conduct a series of similar charettes to bring together the conservation planning leaders in each southeastern state and produce preliminary wildlands planning maps. This process is intended to initiate dialog on largescale ecological reserve network planning issues and provide map-based concepts that can be refined and implemented through subsequent spin-off projects.
After the regional organizational meeting, the Coastal Plains Institute and most of the other initial participants slipped into a passive role. Conway Conservation took the lead in managing SEWP's activities, primarily through the efforts of Linda Duever and Tom Hoctor. It has always seemed that creating and maintaining a SEWP organization would needlessly divert energy from TWP's regional goals. SEWP's role is seen to be that of inspiring, initiating, facilitating, and coordinating local wildlands planning throughout the southeast, rather than creating top-down regional structures and plans. SEWP therefore functions as an effort, rather than as an organization.
Wildlands Planning Charettes
To date, all SEWPs funded projects have involved producing statewide wildlands charettes. A charette is an intensive planning workshop designed to permit natural resources experts to quickly and systematically generate an ecological reserve design map that can be used as a preliminary framework for longterm conservation planning. Such a charette is structured to synthesize the best available ecological information into consensus maps representing an integrated system of conservation lands capable of sustaining the state's ecosystems over the longterm.
The wildlands charettes involve two days of intensive core, buffer, and corridor mapping by the 30-50 people identified as most knowledgeable about the landscape distribution of each state's ecological features. During the charettes, participants work with a rearrangeable set of 1:250,000 mylar GIS overlay maps including USGS quads and maps showing land cover types, transportation systems, natural heritage element locations, public lands, existing protected areas, trails and greenways, county boundaries, and hydrologic units. After the charette, the resulting conceptual reserve design maps are distributed on CD with explanatory text. The overlay map sets are left with the state land trust support organization, where they are used to develop more refined conservation planning maps at regional meetings around the state.
Details of how the charettes are conducted are available in the North Carolina and Georgia reports described below and in the handout Linda Duever and Tom Hoctor prepared for the "Mapping Charettes" workshop they produced for TWP's October 1998 Grassroots Rendezvous.
The North Carolina Wildlands Charette
The Merck Family Fund awarded The Wildlands Project a grant for SEWP to conduct a North Carolina Wildlands Charette in Chapel Hill October 30-31, 1997. Additional financial support was provided by The Carolina Fund and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR).
Conway Conservation worked with Steve Gatewood of TWP and conservation GIS specialist Jim Strittholt of Earth Design Consultants to produce this charette in cooperation with the Conservation Trust for North Carolina and a steering committee comprised of natural resource information experts from NCDENR, the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Duke University, and the North Carolina Gap Analysis Project.
The Georgia Wildlands Charette
The Turner Foundation awarded TWP a grant for SEWP to continue the process with a Georgia Wildlands Charette held in Atlanta April 30 - May 1, 1998. Conway Conservation worked with Steve Gatewood and Jim Strittholt to produce this charette in cooperation with the Georgia Land Trust Service Center, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Georgia Office of The Nature Conservancy and a steering committee comprised of natural resource information experts from GADNR, the Georgia Natural Heritage Program, The Nature Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Chattooga River Watershed Coalition, the Georgia Greenways Initiative, the Georgia Wildlife Federation, and the Georgia Gap Analysis Project..
South Carolina
Through the South Carolina Office of The Nature Conservancy, TWP received a grant from the Moriah Fund for a 1998 South Carolina Wildlands Charette. Steve Gatewood and Linda Duever attempted to work with a steering committee selected by the Moriah Fund to plan this charette, but the committee later decided to do a workshop incorporating timber industry perspectives instead of the strictly ecological mapping TWP had envisioned. TWP therefore decided to let TNC conduct this process, then to review the results and plan further South Carolina efforts after that. TNC subsequently held a workshop that produced maps that should be a good beginning for design of a South Carolina wildlands network.
Tennessee
The Lyndhurst Foundation and the Albert A. List Foundation gave TWP funding for SEWP to conduct a 1999 Tennessee Wildlands Charette. Conway Conservation selected a steering committee based upon the recommendations of cooperators from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the Tennessee Parks and Greenways Foundation. Steve Gatewood and Linda Duever met with that committee in February, 1999. The committee's initial reaction was extremely enthusiastic and supportive, but pressure and misinformation from the timber industry later made several key state-agency representatives reluctant to proceed in association with TWP. Although ecological charette input would have been useful, valuable green infrastructure plans are being generated through other Tennessee efforts.
Other Southeastern States
SEWP hopes to produce wildlands charettes in Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, but no fundraising support has yet been available for these projects.
Cooperating Organizations
SEWP maintains ongoing cooperation with a number of other organizations in addition to TWP, Conway Conservation, and Earth Design Consultants.
The Coastal Plains Institute supports SEWP's activities (non-financially).
SEWP has also established a cooperative relationship with the Coastal Plain Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER). Linda Duever serves as the liaison person for both organizations.
All the above organizations, plus the Natural Areas Association and the Trust for Public Land (Southeastern Office) have served as named sponsors for SEWP's wildlands charettes.
SEWP has also had cooperative relationships with key contacts in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, The Conservation Fund, the Wilderness Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Land Trust Alliance, the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, other national and regional groups, and many other state and local agencies and organizations.
