The Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is known for having served as the headquarters for George Washington during the siege of Boston, as well as for being the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow, his wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow, their children, and their friends were instrumental in the conservation of land running from the Longfellow House down to the Charles River, and across the river to an area known as Soldiers Field. These lands comprise part of a corridor of open space that also includes the Cambridge Cemetery, the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown, Aberdeen Avenue in Cambridge, and the Fresh Pond Reservation. Today, much of this land remains protected from development, and the National Historic Site is an important part of the larger conservation history of Cambridge and Boston.
Celebrating the publication of the article “A View of the Charles: How an American Poet’s Love for His Cambridge Estate Conserved a Piece of the City’s Most Desirable Land,” the Lincoln Institute invites you, in person at 113 Brattle Street or online via Zoom, to join this presentation about the history and conservation legacy of the Longfellow House. Following a presentation from ILCN Director and coauthor Jim Levitt, staff from the National Parks Service will lead a tour of the grounds of the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site for in-person participants.
Doors for the in-person event will open at 5:45 p.m.
Detalles
Fecha(s)
Mayo 29, 2025
Time
6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. (EDT, UTC-4)
Registration Deadline
May 29, 2025 6:00 PM
Idioma
inglés
Palabras clave
conservación, uso de suelo, gobierno local
Oportunidades de becas
International Research for the Study of China’s Urban Development 2025-26
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December 11, 2024 at 11:59 PM
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s China program invited applications for the annual International Research for the Study of China’s Urban Development program. The program sought applications from academic researchers working on the following topics in China:
Land use, carbon neutrality, and spatial planning and governance;
Urban regeneration;
Municipal finance and land value capture;
Impacts of New Urbanization;
Land policies;
Housing policies;
Urban environment and public health; and
Land and water conservation.
The program aims to promote international scholarly dialogue on China’s urban development and land policy, and to further the Lincoln Institute’s objective to advance land policy solutions to economic, social, and environmental challenges. The award is provided to scholars who are based outside mainland China. This year, three individuals received $35,000 each to fund their research.
QUEBEC, CANADA—Two chiefs of Indigenous Nations in North America will accept the 2024 International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) Conservation Visionary Award for their vision and leadership in setting strategically significant global precedents for land conservation.
Mandy Gull-Masty, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) and Chairperson of the Cree Nation Government, will receive the award on behalf of the many individuals who contributed to the implementation of the Cree Regional Conservation Strategy.
Anne Richardson, Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia, will accept the award for her leadership in returning her tribe to their ancestral lands along the Rappahannock River and preserving—in perpetuity—their natural and cultural importance.
“It is our great honor to be able to work with Chief Anne Richardson and Grand Chief Mandy Gull-Masty,” said ILCN Director Jim Levitt. “Their leadership, their perseverance, and their diplomatic skills are world class. It is tremendously important that conservationists around the world take note of the passion and skill that Indigenous leaders bring to the field of land and cultural conservation.”
The ILCN Conservation Visionary Award is presented every three years at the ILCN’s triennial Global Congress to exceptional leaders and organizations that have made enduring contributions to land conservation policy and practice. This year’s Global Congress will bring together 250 land conservation practitioners across six continents from October 16 to 18 in Quebec, Canada. The 2024 Global Congress is cohosted by Canada’s leading land conservation organization, the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC).
Grand Chief Gull-Masty is the first woman to be elected Grand Chief/Chairperson of the Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)/Cree Nation Government. Throughout her career, she has championed her people’s interests and advocated for centering Cree values and leadership in the expansion of conservation lands across Eeyou Istchee (the Cree homeland). Through collaborating with nongovernmental organizations and international platforms, Chief Gull-Masty has effectively conveyed the Cree Nation’s concerns and emphasized the importance of Indigenous protected areas.
Grand Chief Gull-Masty played a key role in the Cree Nation’s collective efforts to protect about 10 million acres (some 4 million hectares) in Eeyou Istchee, the Cree people’s ancestral homeland. The Cree Regional Conservation Strategy is distinctive not only for its scale, ambitious targets for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and sustainable community development, but also for the manner in which it carefully integrates the traditional knowledge of Cree land users, who have lived intimately with the land since time immemorial, and the expertise of Geographic Information System specialists at the Cree Nation and at supporting organizations such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
“Protecting and conserving the lands and waters of Eeyou Istchee (the Cree homeland) is essential for protecting our Cree way of life. The Cree Nation has been working pro-actively with our partners on building a large-scale protected areas network across the lands and seas of Eeyou Istchee, for the benefit of present and future generations. I am honored to receive this award on behalf of all of those who have helped in making this happen.”
Chief Anne Richardson has served as Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe since 1998, the first woman Chief to lead a Tribe in Virginia since the 1700s. Through her efforts, the Tribe was acknowledged by the federal government in 2018. Her groundbreaking efforts to advance Indigenous-led conservation have been recognized by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who recently appointed Chief Richardson to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Board of directors.
Chief Richardson’s vision of returning her Tribe to their ancestral lands in the Rappahannock River Valley led her to partner with conservation organizations and federal agencies to purchase 465 acres (about 188 hectares) of their historic town, Pissacoack, along the four-mile stretch of diatomaceous cliffs known as Fones Cliffs. She is now leading an effort to rematriate more than 1,600 acres (about 650 hectares) of Fones Cliffs, the Tribe’s ancestral homelands, and protect them for their cultural heritage and as critical habitat for bald eagles and waterfowl.
“Rappahannock means “the people who live where the water rises and falls,” said Chief Richardson. “We are river people – the Beaver Clan – industrious builders. We view the eagle as a messenger from the Creator, who tells us to heal the land and reunite it with the people.”
These two initiatives are globally outstanding examples of Indigenous-led conservation and conservation through reconciliation, a growing movement that recognizes the importance of the former and the imperative for cultural respect, equality in value, and practice of diverse conservation systems.
“The global land conservation community must help realize the potential of all sectors of society to contribute to land protection goals,” said Chandni Navalkha, associate director of Sustainably Managed Land and Water Resources at the Lincoln Institute. “Indigenous-led conservation is central to achieving equitable, enduring, and effective efforts to safeguard land for its natural and cultural values.”
“We extend a sincere congratulations to Grand Chief Mandy Gull-Masty and Chief Anne Richardson for their inspiring leadership and for receiving these prestigious awards,” said Catherine Grenier, president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. “Working in support of the Cree Nation Government has inspired NCC as an organization to work in new ways—to create new pathways to partnership and transform our ways of thinking that reconcile relationships with the land and each other. We hope others will look to you for similar inspiration, and as a testament to the knowledge, commitment and heart-centered leadership of Indigenous peoples around the world.”
Lead image: Anne Richardson, Chief of the Rappahannock Tribe in Virginia (left) and Mandy Gull-Masty, Grand Chief of the Grand Council of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee and Chairperson of the Cree Nation Government (right), courtesy of the Rappahannock Tribe and Jared Gull
Conservationist Mavis Gragg Receives Kingsbury Browne Award
By Corey Himrod, Octubre 9, 2024
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The Land Trust Alliance and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy are pleased to announce that attorney and conservationist Mavis Gragg has been presented with the distinguished Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award at the Alliance’s annual national land conservation conference, held this year in Providence, Rhode Island.
Gragg is co-founder of HeirShares, an organization that delivers comprehensive educational content, data and technology to empower heirs’ property landowners and attorneys dealing with heirs’ property issues. She is a founding member of the Conservationists of Color, an affinity group creating space for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement to connect. Gragg is also a member of the Land Trust Alliance’s Conservation Defense Advisory Council and served on its Common Ground Advisory Council, which laid the groundwork for the Alliance’s community-centered conservation program.
The Kingsbury Browne Award is presented annually at Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference and honors those who have enriched the conservation community through their outstanding leadership, innovation and creativity in land conservation. Named for Kingsbury Browne, the conservationist who inspired the Alliance’s founding in 1982, the award ranks among the organization’s highest honors. Gragg will serve as the Kingsbury Browne distinguished practitioner for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., for 2024-2025.
“The word that comes to mind when I think about Mavis is ‘connector,’ because that’s what she does — she connects people to each other and she connects people to the resources they need to achieve their land goals,” said Jennifer Miller Herzog, interim president and CEO of the Land Trust Alliance. “Mavis came to conservation through people, focusing on family land retention following her own family’s experience with heirs’ property. And in her work, she has continued to put people first with a tirelessness and a generosity of spirit that is unmatched.”
“We are proud and honored to be able to work with Mavis over the coming year,” said Jim Levitt, director of the International Land Conservation Network. “Her pioneering insight will add momentum to the effort to broaden the reach and scope of the land conservation movement.”
Kingsbury Browne distinguished practitioners engage in research, writing and mentoring, and facilitate a project that builds upon and shares their experience with the broader community.
About the Land Trust Alliance
Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization working to save the places people need and love by empowering and mobilizing land trusts in communities across America to conserve land for the benefit of all. The Alliance represents approximately 1,000 member land trusts and affiliates supported by more than 250,000 volunteers and 6.3 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., with staff in communities across the United States.
About the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.
By many accounts, Costa Rica has been a unique Central American success story—“a beacon of Enlightenment” and “a world leader in democratic, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth,” according to the prominent economist Joseph Stiglitz.
A nation of about 5 million people roughly the size of West Virginia, Costa Rica has been punching above its weight particularly in the realm of sustainability and climate action: a pioneer in eco-tourism; successful in getting nearly all of its power from renewable sources, including an enterprising use of hydro; and a leader in fighting deforestation and conserving land with its carbon-soaking rainforests.
The Land Matters podcast welcomed two special guests recently who know a thing or two about this country: Carlos Alvarado Quesada and Claudia Dobles Camargo, the former President and First Lady of Costa Rica. They are both in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, area this year—she is a Loeb Fellow, part of a mid-career fellowship program based at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and he is a visiting professor of practice at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Former Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada and former First Lady Claudia Dobles Camargo at the Lincoln Institute offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in April 2023. Credit: Will Jason.
Also in the studio was Enrique Silva, vice president of programs at the Lincoln Institute, who oversees the organization’s research and activities globally, and has years of experience in and familiarity with Latin America.
The conversation, recorded at the Podcast Garage in Allston after a visit by the couple to the Lincoln Institute, included reflections on leadership and climate action, and what it’s been like to take a year to decompress after an eventful time in office, from 2018 to 2022.
Costa Rica has much to show the world when it comes to the implementation of targeted sustainability practices, Quesada said. “We’re not saying people have to do exactly the same [as we did], but we can say it’s possible, and it’s been done in a model that actually creates well-being and economic growth,” he said. “Back in the day, people would say it’s impossible—‘if you’re going to create protected areas, you’re going to destroy the economy.’ It turned out to be the other way around, it actually propelled the economy.”
After seeing big successes in the countryside, the interventions have turned to urban areas. “Costa Rica has done such an amazing job in nature-based solutions, not so much on urban sustainability,” said Dobles, noting the ambitious National Decarbonization Plan she launched with Quesada, which aims to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. “In order to decarbonize, we really needed to focus also on our urban agenda.”
A big task was reinvigorating public transit, starting with a new electric train that would have spanned the city of San Jose. Quesada’s successor shelved the $1.5 billion project, demonstrating the common mismatch between long-term projects and limited time in office. A pilot project to electrify buses was implemented, however, to rave reviews. The couple says they are hopeful the train will be revived.
“I know that this is eventually going to happen. Sometimes you have political setbacks,” said Quesada. “Your administration cannot own throughout time what’s going to happen, but you can plant positive seeds.”
Costa Rica has been nothing if not creative in addressing the many dilemmas inherent in climate action. Open-ore mining is banned, for example, but entrepreneurs figured out a way to extract lithium from recycled batteries.
“That’s very linked to the discussion of the just energy transition, where the jobs are going to come from, where the exports are going to come from. While there’s a huge opportunity for many developing countries which are rich and are endowed with minerals and metals . . . we need to address those complexities,” said Quesada.
Dobles added, “When we talk about decarbonization, we cannot exclude from that conversation, the inequality conversation. This is supposed to provide our possibilities of survival as humankind, but also it’s a possibility for a new type of social and economic development and growth.”
Former First Lady Claudia Dobles Camargo makes a point as former President Carlos Alvarado Quesada looks on. The pair visited the Lincoln Institute office to discuss their climate and sustainability initiatives in April 2023 while spending a year at Harvard and Tufts universities, respectively. Credit: Anthony Flint.
Reflecting on being in the land of Harvard, MIT, and Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, Dobles said she has been immersed in “the whole academic ecosystem that is happening here . . . just to be, again, in academia, sometimes just to receive information, not having the pressure of having the answers . . . . It’s been wonderful.”
“Being a head of state for four years of a country, it’s an experience that I’m currently unpacking still,” said Quesada. “I’m doing a little bit of writing on that, but you get to reflect a lot, because it’s a period of time you live very intensely. In our case, we were not only working with decarbonization, with the projects we mentioned, we [were also working] with the fiscal sustainability of the country. We had COVID. We had [the legalization of same-sex marriage].
“We tend to train ourselves for things that are outside of us, like methods, tools, knowledge,” he said. “There’s a part of it that has to do with training ourselves, our feelings, our habits, our framing, our thinking . . . to address those hard challenges.”
Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as the 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022, when his constitutionally limited term ended. He won the 2022 Planetary Leadership Award from the National Geographic Society for his actions to protect the ocean, and was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders from around the world. Before entering politics, he worked for Procter and Gamble, Latin America.
Claudia Dobles Camargo is an architect with extensive experience in urban mobility, affordable and social housing, community engagement, climate change, and fair transition. As First Lady, she was co-leader of the Costa Rica National Decarbonization Plan. Her architecture degree is from the University of Costa Rica, and she also studied in Japan, concentrating on a sustainable approach to architecture.
The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.
As the director of The Nature Conservancy’s North America Center for Resilient Conservation Science, ecologist Mark Anderson led a team of scientists in the development and mapping of TNC’s resilient and connected network: a detailed, nationwide map of linked landscapes that are uniquely suited to preserve biodiversity and withstand the impacts of climate change. In 2021, Anderson received the Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award and Fellowship, named for the Boston lawyer and former Lincoln Institute fellow whose work led to the creation of the Land Trust Alliance. In this interview, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, he explains why connected natural strongholds are critical to combating our biodiversity crisis.
JON GOREY: What is the focus of your research?
MARK ANDERSON: Conservation of land and water is extremely expensive, and it’s long term. What we’ve really been focused on is making sure we’re conserving places that are resilient to climate change—really thinking about biodiversity loss, and where are the places on the ground or in the water that we think will continue to sustain nature, even as the climate changes in ways that we can’t fully predict.
As we dove deeper and deeper into the science, the beauty of it is that the properties of land and water—the topography, the soil types, the way water moves and collects—actually build resilience into the system. When you hear about a climate disaster, for example, a drought or a flood, you kind of picture it as a big swash everywhere. But in fact, there’s all sorts of detail to how that plays out on the land, and we can actually use an understanding of that to find places that are much more resilient and places that are much more vulnerable. So the effects of that are spread in understandable and predictable ways, and that’s what we are focused on: finding those places where we think nature will retain resilience.
Climate change is very different than any other threat we’ve ever faced because it’s a change in the ambient conditions of the planet. It’s a change in the temperature and moisture regimes. And in response to that change, nature literally has to rearrange. So a big question is, how do we help nature thrive and conserve the ability of nature to rearrange? Connectivity between places where species can thrive and move is key to that.
We divided the US into about 10 regions, and in each of those regions, we had a large steering committee of scientists from every state. They reviewed it, they argued about the concepts, we tested stuff out, they tested it on the ground, and that’s what improved the quality of the work, it’s all thanks to them. By the time we finished, it took 287 scientists and 12 years, so it was a lot of work. We involved a lot of people in the work, and so there’s a lot of trust now of the dataset.
Anderson led the development of The Nature Conservancy’s Resilient Land Mapping Tool, which allows users to generate customized maps of the places in the US where species can survive and thrive in a changing climate. Credit: The Nature Conservancy.
JG: What are you working on now, and what are you interested in working on next?
MA: The US has not signed on to the global 30 by 30 agreement [to protect 30 percent of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030], but we have America the Beautiful, which the Biden Administration has launched as a 30 by 30 plan. People get hung up on that 30 percent, which is important, but if we want to sustain biodiversity, what’s really important is, which 30 percent is it? Are we representing all the ecosystems, are we reaching all the species? Are we finding places that are resilient, and are we connecting them in a way that nature can actually move and be sustained?
Our work is all about resilience and connectivity and biodiversity, and it turns out that the network we came up with, that has full representation of all the habitats and ecoregions and connectivity, turned out to be 34 percent [of the US]. So we have internally adopted it within TNC as our framework: We are trying to conserve that network, and that’s been super exciting. Because over the last five years, we conserved 1.1 million acres, of which about three quarters was directly in the network.
In 2023, The Nature Conservancy protected high-priority landscapes including Fern Lake, which spans the Kentucky-Tennessee border in the Cumberland Gap. Credit: PapaBear via iStock/Getty Images Plus.
It’s very unlikely that the federal government is going to actually do the conservation; it’s really going to be done by the private NGOs, state agencies, and land trusts. In fact, in the Northeast, private land conservation over the last 10 years surpassed all the federal and state agency conservation combined. So our strategy has been to create a tool and get the science out and just encourage people to be using the science and thinking about climate resilience—with our fingers crossed that, if this makes sense to people, wherever they are, and we’re all sort of working off that, it will conserve the network in a diffuse way.
What we’re working on now is freshwater resilience, focusing on rivers and streams and the connectivity and resilience of those systems. Our vision of a resilient system is a long, connected network with good water quality that allows fish and mussels to move around and adapt to the changing climate. But a lot of those systems are fragmented by dams, their floodplains are developed, their water quality is poor, and there’s a lot of water use, because they’re in a residential area that’s extracting all the water.
JG: What do you wish more people knew about conservation, biodiversity, and ecology?
MA: Well, two things—one good, one bad. I wish more people understood the urgency of the biodiversity crisis. The fact that we’ve lost 3 billion birds—there are 3 billion fewer birds than there were 40 years ago. Our mammals are constrained now to small fragments of their original habitats. There’s a crisis in our insects, that is really scary. Most of my career, we were focused on rare things; now these are common things that are dropping in abundance. So I wish people really understood that.
And I also wish people understood that we can turn that around, by really focusing our energy and conserving the right places, and there’s still hope and time to do that. It’s a big task, and it can only be done by thousands of organizations working on it, but it can be turned around.
River otters in Indiana’s Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge. The Nature Conservancy recently purchased 1,700 acres adjacent to the refuge, expanding the valley’s connected wildlife habitat to more than 20,000 acres. Credit: Steve Gifford via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
JG. When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?
MA: Well, I’m a scientist, and there are so many potential errors and problems and data issues, they never end. So our results are not perfect. They’re pretty good, they’ve been ground tested a lot, but they’re not perfect.
The other thing is the future. I really want my kids and grandkids to have a wonderful world full of nature, and to get there, we’re going to have to really change our course.
JG. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned in your research?
MA: When we started this work, we didn’t have a concept of what the end was going to look like. And I probably thought of the end as a bunch of big places, you know? But it’s not a bunch of big places, it’s a net, it’s a web—a web of connected places, some big, some small. So that was a surprise to me.
JG: You work a lot with maps—what’s the coolest map you’ve ever seen?
MA: We have a concept called climate flow, which is predicting how nature will move through the landscape following unfragmented areas and climatic gradients. And one of our scientists successfully animated that map, so that you can see the movement of the flows—and that is one of the coolest maps. It’s not perfectly accurate, but it gets the concept across really nicely. And it was this map that helped us figure out that there’s a pattern to all this. It’s not random, there’s a pattern—there are places where flows concentrate, there are places where flow diffuses, and that’s really important to know.
The Nature Conservancy’s animated Migrations in Motion map shows the average direction species need to move to track hospitable climates as they shift across the landscape. Credit: Dan Majka/The Nature Conservancy.
JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately?
MA: My favorite book recently was Wilding by Isabella Tree. It’s a nonfiction book from the British Isles, where a farming couple in Knepp, they were never able to make the area a productive farm so they decided just to stop farming it and let it go wild, and they document the change from farming to wildness. They introduce some grazing animals that would be the counterpart of the aurochs and warthogs that would have been there, and immediately, the farm becomes a total mess—lots of weeds, dug up areas, the neighbors complain. But over time, all these rare species start to show up, all these owls that have not been seen, nightingales, turtle doves, and pretty soon it is like a total biodiversity hotspot. So it’s a very interesting read, it’s very hopeful.
In the last year I’ve read several books about African American perspectives on the environmental movement, and those are powerful. One was called Black Faces, White Spaces, by Carolyn Finney, and I’m reading one now called A Darker Wilderness, and it’s really eye-opening on the equity issues that are buried in conservation.
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