BiblioVault - Books about Conservation projects (Natural resources)

The Civilian Conservation Corps in Wisconsin

Nature’s Army at Work

Jerry Apps

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2019

Between 1933 and 1942, the Civilian Conservation Corps, a popular New Deal relief program, was at work across America. During the Great Depression, young men lived in rustic CCC camps planting trees, cutting trails, and reversing the effects of soil erosion. In his latest book, acclaimed environmental writer Jerry Apps presents the first comprehensive history of the CCC in Wisconsin. Apps guides readers around the state, from the Northwoods to the Driftless Area, creating a map of where and how more than 125 CCC camps left indelible marks on the landscape. Captured in rich detail as well are the voices of the CCC boys who by preserving Wisconsin’s natural beauty not only discovered purpose in their labor, but founded an enduring legacy of environmental stewardship.

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The Conservation Program Handbook

A Guide for Local Government Land Acquisition

Sandra J. Tassel

Island Press, 2009

Between 1996 and 2007, voters approved almost $24 billion for local government park, open space, and other conservation purposes. Despite this substantial sum for land protection, there was at that time no book available to guide officials as they implemented voters’ mandates. The Conservation Program Handbook was written in response to numerous requests to The Trust for Public Land for exactly this type of guidance from community leaders who wanted to know how to effectively conserve their iconic landscapes.

In addition, in November 2008, despite massive doses of terrible financial news, voters across the U.S. approved land conservation funding measures. It was a record-breaking year for land protection financing, with voters demonstrating substantial support for open space ballot measures despite the economic and fiscal crisis of the time.

The Conservation Program Handbook is a manual that provides all of the information—on a broad spectrum of topics—that conservation professionals are likely to encounter. It compiles and distills advice from professionals based on successful conservation efforts across the country, including a list of “best practices” for the most critical issues conservationists can expect to face. By providing information on how to do conservation work in the best possible manner, The Conservation Program Handbook has the goal of increasing the amount, quality, and pace of conservation being achieved by local governments throughout the nation.

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Measures of Success

Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation and Development Projects

Richard Margoluis and Nick Salafsky

Island Press, 1998

Measures of Success is a practical, hands-on guide to designing, managing, and measuring the impacts of community-oriented conservation and development projects. It presents a simple, clear, logical, and yet comprehensive approach to developing and implementing effective programs, and can help conservation and development practitioners use principles of adaptive management to test assumptions about their projects and learn from the results.

The book presents a systematic approach to improving the focus, effectiveness, and efficiency of projects, with specific guidelines and advice on:

designing a realistic conceptual framework based on local site conditions
developing clearly defined goals, objectives, and activities
creating a monitoring plan that can be used to assess whether goals and objectives are being met
integrating social and biological science techniques to collect the most relevant and useful data in the most cost-effective way
using the information obtained through the monitoring plan to modify the project and learn from the result

The text is developed in eight chapters that follow the structure of a planning process from conception to completion, with the chapters linked by four scenarios that serve as teaching case studies throughout the book. Examples from these scenarios illustrate the processes and tools discussed, and each scenario case study is presented in its entirety in an appendix to the volume. The approach has been developed and field tested by practitioners working in many different projects in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and their experience and input ensure that the guide is both practical and useful.

Measures of Success is the only work of its kind currently available, and represents an invaluable resource for field-based practitioners, project managers, and local community leaders, as well as for international NGO staff, college and university teachers and students, researchers, and government officials.

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Pathways to Success

Taking Conservation to Scale in Complex Systems

Nick Salafsky and Richard Margoluis

Island Press, 2021

As environmental problems grow larger and more pressing, conservationists have had to adapt. With a shrinking window of time to act, they are turning to broad approaches to combat continental- and global-scale crises of biodiversity loss, invasive species, and climate change. Pathways to Success—the long-awaited successor to the classic volume Measures of Success—is a modern guide to building large-scale transformative programs capable of tackling the complex conservation crises we face today.

In this strikingly illustrated volume, coauthors Nick Salafsky and Richard Margoluis walk readers through fundamental concepts of effective program-level design, helping them to think strategically about project coordination, funding, and stakeholder input. Chapters in the first part of the book look at all aspects of designing and implementing large-scale conservation programs while the second part focuses on how to use data and information to manage, adapt, and learn from program strategies. In addition, the authors offer practical advice for avoiding pitfalls, such as formulaic recipes and simplistic silver-bullet solutions that can trip up otherwise well-intentioned efforts. Abundant graphics help to explain and clarify concepts presented in the text, and a glossary in the back matter defines technical terms for the reader.

Pathways to Success is the definitive guide for conservation program managers and funders who want to increase the scale and effectiveness of their work combating biodiversity loss, climate change, and other pressing environmental issues.

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