The White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Initiative (the Initiative) is a project recently completed by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) through funding from the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC) Demonstration Projects. The NALCC seeks Demonstration Projects that show how existing conservation tools developed through previous NALCC-funded projects can be used to enhance and facilitate regional conservation efforts on the ground. The Initiative sought NALCC funds to use NALCC tools and products to develop a parcel level plan to prioritize tracts for conservation based on their significance for climate resilience. TPL sought to improve planning and prioritization throughout the White Mountains and Moosehead Lake Corridor through an online portal accessible to stakeholders, as well as through public meetings with the stakeholders.

The White Mountains to Moosehead Lake Corridor (the Corridor) covers 2.7 million acres from northern New Hampshire into western Maine. The region is dominated by long ridgelines and high peaks, including ten out of Maine's fourteen mountains over 4,000 feet in elevation. The geography includes portions of the Androscoggin River watershed and the Kennebec River watershed, including the highest elevation Atlantic salmon habitat in the Kennebec drainage. The Corridor contains a substantial concentration of major lakes, including Lake Umbagog and the Rangeley Lakes. The region hosts habitat for climate sensitive species, such as Bicknell's Thrush and eastern brook trout. This landscape is of unique interest for climate resilience due to its role in mega-regional connectivity, its regionally unique geology such as ultramafic settings, its great diversity of elevation, slope, and aspect, and its well-watered hydrology.

The Corridor contains a wide diversity of public land ownership through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and Department of Defense. It also includes tribal lands, a myriad of state lands, community owned lands and private land under conservation easement. Each of these partners has a direct interest in access to data about the Corridor that can inform on-the-ground conservation activities.

TPL integrated multiple NALCC science products and other data into a parcel-level GIS conservation plan for the 2.7 million-acre White Mountains to Moosehead Lake focus area of Maine and New Hampshire. Multiple stakeholder meetings of landowners and NALCC experts were convened to select the most appropriate datasets and to update and refine the data. The GIS data was incorporated into an online portal and mapping analysis tool. Training for local partners most likely to benefit from the tool was also provided. A website called "Measures of Progress" will be available online to document how successful the Initiative has been over time by showing how the data informed conservation activities. Finally, the online tool, process of development, trainings and tracking of success were presented at multiple conferences and workshops throughout the NALCC region.

TPL's investment in this planning exercise has already begun helping the organization inform how to grow their capacity to protect an additional 100,000 acres over the next ten years. TPL will continue to educate partners and encourage use of the tool for conservation activities within the Corridor. Links to the online tool will be available on the NALCC website after completing a final review. (mg)

The Wildlife Management Institute (WMI), in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is providing support to the Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) network. This section of the Outdoor News Bulletin provides readers with regular updates on LCC efforts involving WMI.