Protected Areas and Biodiversity Conservation II: Engaging surrounding communities
Session Organizers: Jane M. Packard, Priscilla Weeks, and Mikki Sager

Description: Within the watersheds that connect mountains and seas, diverse communities are finding ways to maintain and restore ecological processes supporting biodiversity on mosaics of private and public lands. People with diverse cultural backgrounds bring together a variety of perspectives in the process of implementing land stewardship "in perpetuity".  Contrasts are sharpened when the rural communities within or around protected areas include both impoverished neighborhoods and leisure resorts or subdivisions of "green mansions".  Within working landscapes, conservation practitioners may interface on a daily basis with "land rich and cash poor" constituents as well as those who are "land hungry and cash rich".  The challenges of translating scientifically-based goals for conservation, into the realities of local stewardship, may be better addressed by explicit recognition of underlying tacit cultural models of land conservation.   In this workshop, we will discuss several case studies that illustrate the challenges of working with rural communities adjacent to protected lands.