Connected Landscapes

Every day, runaway development eats up more of our dwindling wild nature. In fact, just 14 percent of land here in the U.S. is protected from large-scale threats like drilling, mining and road-building. That human-caused nature loss crisis, along with climate change, is killing off species, damaging communities and degrading quality of life. The resulting struggle for basic needs like food and clean water worsens racial and social inequity. The time has come to re-imagine our public lands as a critical solution for those crises and part of a more just, equitable and sustainable future.  

By protecting and connecting an intact network of lands and waters that includes those remaining wild islands—places like national parks and wilderness areas—we can ensure wildlife are able to migrate, adapt and endure in the face of the climate crisis and other threats. This will also help people, who rely on nature for food, water and refuge. 

These wild places also bolster our ability to combat climate change itself and blunt its worst impacts. Forests and other landscapes have great capacity to trap greenhouse-gas pollution, and intact habitat like wetlands can buffer communities against the worst effects of flooding, storm surges and other extreme weather.  

Working with local communities and heeding both rigorous science and traditional Indigenous knowledge, we’re building a network of lands and waters that will sustain people and nature for generations to come.