Campaigns Built to Win & Designed to Last
Overview
Conservation campaigns are harder than ever. The political landscape has shifted, the media environment has changed, and the approaches that once worked are no longer enough. At the same time, the need to protect land and water has never been more urgent.
The Conservation Advocacy Institute is a new kind of program – an immersive, week-long experience for mid to senior-level conservation practitioners who are ready to examine what it takes now to build campaigns that win and last. The Institute is not a typical conference – it is a rigorous, hands-on week of work alongside peers from across the conservation movement.
The program is designed around simple but essential elements of a successful campaign: bipartisan support and durability. Conservation campaigns can be designed to win and last and the Institute is built to show teams how.
Applications for the inaugural cohort of the Conservation Advocacy Institute are now open.
Lesson 1
Appeal to Values, Bolstered by Economics
Durable conservation is built on shared values. Polling consistently shows that conservation crosses partisan lines. Americans of all political persuasions support clean water, healthy wildlife, and access to outdoor recreation. The problem is conservation advocates have too often pursued policies that feel disconnected from those values, or that impose costs on communities without delivering visible local benefits.
Science shows that success in conserving the nation’s land, water and biodiversity requires conserving large landscapes across public, private and tribal lands. Successfully conserving large landscapes across public, private, and tribal lands depends on our ability to work across diverse stakeholders, including farmers, ranchers, forest landowners, tribes, state and local governments and many others. When advocates turn off key constituents, conservation loses the people and organizations it needs to last.
Key Insights
Appealing to values is critical, but considering the economic impact of conservation policies is also important for durability.
Conservation advocates should focus on where interests intersect; not on “trade-offs and balance.”
What durability looks like
Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks, New Mexico
In 2017, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (R-MT) reviewed the monument while Gov. Susana Martinez (R-NM) and Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) pushed to shrink it. He found a community with deep cultural and economic ties to the place, and left it intact.
Result
$234 million in economic benefit, and nearly four times the visitors, by 2025.
Lesson 2
Build Durable Coalitions by Design
Durable conservation is built upon the breadth and depth of the stakeholder coalition behind it. A coalition composed primarily of environmental organizations and Democratic elected officials can achieve an initial conservation victory and still lack the strength to hold it when the political environment changes. The same is true of coalitions dominated by national organizations working on issues that are local or regional at heart.
The coalitions that produce durable conservation consistently include constituencies that reach across partisan lines and include voices from the communities most directly affected.
Key Insights
The Republican champion can be the critical variable.
Coalition-building takes time and requires leadership.
It is critical to have a transparent and genuinely responsive process.
What durability looks like
Boulder–White Clouds, Idaho
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) spent fifteen years building support, alongside the Idaho Conservation League's Rick Johnson, whose stated job was "to make success politically inevitable." By the end, the Idaho Farm Bureau, the Idaho Cattle Association, outfitters, snowmobilers, and conservation groups were all behind the wilderness bill.
Result
Passed the Senate by unanimous consent in 2015.
Lesson 3
Build Policies & Programs to Last
Even a broad, well-constructed coalition cannot protect a policy that is poorly conceived or is economically disconnected from the communities it affects. Bringing those affected by a policy or program into their design produces better, more durable solutions.
Key Insights
Public Lands & Wildlife: Empower collaboratives to design land management plans and restoration projects.
Private & Working Lands: Deploy voluntary, incentive-based approaches delivered through partnerships at scale and Innovation.
Tribal Lands: Prioritize engagement and partnership
What durability looks like
Red-cockaded woodpecker, North Carolina
In the 1990s, a longleaf pine landowner's license plate read "I EAT RCWS." Then the first Safe Harbor agreement offered landowners regulatory certainty in exchange for managing habitat for the endangered bird. He was among the first to sign up: "I want to see this succeed."
Result
Safe Harbor agreements helped move the bird from endangered to threatened.
Lesson 4
Plan for Implementation
Implementation - policy choices for how the conservation will actually be delivered on the ground, by whom, and how it is funded - is a critical component to durability. When implementation of conservation programs and policies is strong,
stakeholder and political support for those programs and conservation thrives; when implementation is poor, stakeholder and political support suffers. Thus, if implementation is not addressed thoughtfully, a brilliant policy design and broad stakeholder coalition may still fail to result in a durable conservation policy or program.
Key Insights
Agency capacity, commitment, and resources for a program are the indispensable delivery mechanism for most programs.
Bureaucratic red tape undermines the durability of conservation programs and policies if it prevents the program from doing work on the ground and serving community needs.
Place-based collaborative governance that bring together together landowners, agencies, conservation groups, and community members around a shared commitment is critical to deliver ongoing results.
Establishing an administrative home for policy implementation that is effective and durable is critical.
What durability looks like
The Blackfoot Challenge, Montana
Since 1993, ranchers, agencies, conservation groups, and neighbors have managed one watershed together. They work on the 80 percent of issues they agree on and leave the other 20 at the door. The partnership has lasted through administrations of both parties.
Result
91,000 acres of private land under conservation easement.
Conclusion
Durability As Strategy
Durability does not happen by accident, by the force of good science alone, or by the passion of committed advocates. It requires the patient work of building relationships, the discipline of designing for breadth rather than purity, and the strategic foresight to invest in institutions and communities. That work is harder than winning a single legislative battle or policy campaign, but it is the work that produces conservation that lasts.
These findings underscore why the American Nature Strategy developed by the U.S. Nature Initiative is built the way it is. Its four lessons shape how the Strategy sets its ten-year goals and how it builds the campaigns to reach them, starting where conservation still wins across party lines and designing every win to survive the next election.