How do we protect our fragile biodiversity? Collaboration. And few embody that approach better than Nancy Newhouse. A biologist with a masters in environmental design, Nancy is BC’s Regional Vice President for the Nature Conservancy of Canada – one of Canada’s largest and most respected environmental organizations. NCC’s work to protect nature by purchasing land is the by-product of a market-driven, evidence-based approach and its ability to communicate knowledge to diverse stakeholders has allowed the organization to build consensus. It’s a unique model and one that Nancy has perfected across three decades of work researching wildlife and habitat, while building the needed relationships to take an idea and make it a reality.
To understand why Nancy and the Nature Conservancy believe the key to conservation is connecting people to people, people to land, and land to land, it’s best to start with their efforts to save endangered badgers along the western slopes of Canada’s Rocky Mountains. We met with Nancy near her Vancouver office and our first question: Why do badgers matter?
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What do you think?
- Do you agree with the incremental, bridge-building work of Nancy and the Nature Conservancy?
- Is this type of collaborative, market-driven approach one we need to see more often when we look at how to protect ecosystems?
- Do more advocates need to embrace incrementalism? Or does the biodiversity crisis require bigger, bolder solutions to protect ecosystems?
- Are bold ideas justified if they’re backed by science, even if they fail to build bridges and create consensus?
- Are compromise solutions simply a creative way to solve a problem? Or will compromise always create losers, with neither side of a debate getting what they actually want or need?