Goals

The Berkley Gift for the Future of Conservation is –

• Designed to support the efforts of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT), the Land Trust Alliance (LTA) and other, similar organizations to develop and apply new, innovative strategies for land conservation,
• By linking the convening, research and teaching activities at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (FES) ever more closely to the needs of the land conservation community

Structure

The Gift has been made in two parts –

• Endowment to fund the work of the Berkley Conservation Scholars, bringing the passion, experience and creativity of Yale graduate students to bear on these issues.
• Current use for the Yale Program on Strategies for the Future of Conservation, a multi-year effort to bring the most innovative minds together in the search for new approaches to increasing the resources applied to land conservation in the US.

Berkley Conservation Scholars
One of FES’ greatest strengths is its students. With an average age of 28, the vast majority of our masters and doctoral students bring to their studies both several years of work experience and a deep commitment to improving the environment. Given the absence of the clear “career paths” found in medical or law school, the students enter our program knowing that they will have to take an entrepreneurial approach to matching their personal goals with their professional career. The result is a rich pool of passionate, creative talent ready to do even more to promote innovative thinking in land conservation.

Income from the Conservation Scholars Endowment will be awarded to students of high potential to help fund their research and professional experiences at the cutting edge of land conservation. The internships will be available during both the school year and the summer, creating a virtual “R&D Department” for the US land conservation community. The Berkley Conservation Scholars will play a critical role in helping to bring together practitioners and academics in the search for new conservation tools.

Program on Strategies for the Future of Conservation
The work of the Berkley Scholars will be embedded in and allow a major extension of FES’ continuing efforts to enhance the effectiveness of land conservation through its convening, research and teaching activities. Over at least the next three years, the Berkley Gift will enable us to take the following new steps:

• Work with an advisory group from MCHT, LTA and a few other conservation organizations to help: (i) identify priority areas for work in the US (such as those included in MCHT’s Conservation Innovation Implementation Strategies); (ii) ensure that the results of the work are useful to the land conservation community; and (iii) apply and disseminate the results of these efforts.
• Host an annual, high-level creative design workshop on Conservation Strategies to bring leading practitioners and thinkers (including the advisory group) together with members of the FES community (Berkley Scholars, other students, faculty and staff) to: (i) compare lessons learned from efforts to use new approaches to land conservation in the field; (ii) review the results of the research conducted at FES on innovative techniques (see below); (iii) develop application and dissemination plans for the new tools and strategies identified/developed; and (iv) continually recalibrate the focus of the Program to meet the evolving needs of the land conservation community.
• Expand the cutting-edge research on new strategies for land conservation (such as financing, marketing and partnerships) being done by our students and faculty through: (i) clinical courses (such as Conservation Strategies, discussed below); (ii) the work of the new Berkley Scholars both during the school year and the summer; and (iii) support for additional research by interested FES faculty.

Implementation

The initial effort to utilize the Berkley Gift will be led by Brad Gentry, Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at FES. It consists of the following steps:

• Working with an initial advisory group from MCHT, LTA, Vermont Land Trust, Columbia Land Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land to help focus the convening and research efforts;
• Hosting the initial creative design workshop at the Pocantico Conference Center on June 8th and 9th, 2006;
• Partially restructuring Brad’s clinical course on Conservation Strategies to serve as the foundation for the research efforts (converting the pure clinical experience into a series of client-led research projects);
• Reaching out to other interested FES faculty to bring their knowledge and initiatives into the Program;
• Creating an internal FES committee to choose the Berkley Conservation Scholars; and
• Hiring part-time administrative staff to help ensure the effort starts quickly and proceeds well.