The White Cloud Council

Parks to Peaks Initiative

A broad coalition of organizations interested in land conservation on a regional scale has developed an approach that provides a lesson in how to get something done with a minimum of bureaucracy, staff, and organizational wrangling. The lessons here are broadly applicable to planning in general and serve to demonstrate that neither the size of the budget nor the celebrity of the consultant has little to do with success.

The White Cloud Council (WCC) met in Tucson in March 2000, and the climate of the meeting was to get something on the ground that would demonstrate the following principles:

• Integrate land-use planning with biological and social sustainability
• Build a broader network of people committed to land conservation
• Fully develop the potential of working across many diverse organizations
• Connect green spaces all the way from urban neighborhood parks to pristine wild lands
• Provide the local impetus for improved land policies at the state and national levels.

The American Planning Association was identified as a potential partner by other White Cloud members and invited to this meeting. The synergy among the land conservation groups and the planning perspective has worked to produce a great deal of results for the resources used.

The WCC as a whole, about 50 people altogether, had empowered a steering committee of about 15 members to make organizational decisions based on overall input from the Council. Aided by a single staff person, a Pilot Project working group of 10 volunteers offered to pursue the mission to come up with a process and get several pilot projects identified and running by the end of the year. No consultant was hired to "facilitate" the process; most meetings were by phone conference call and interim communications by e-mail.

The first task was to select criteria for pilot projects. A draft was circulated among the working group, and this is what it looked like after those two meetings:

1. Enthusiastic civic and elected leaders willing to invest in a relationship with WCC.
2. Potential for communication and synergy at all levels.
3. Communities that are struggling with conservation issues and have taken positive steps to correct one or more of these issues.
4. An assembly of public and private stakeholders tied to the regional landscape that can lead to effective partnerships.
5. Willingness/ability to identify and link key resources across a landscape larger than the immediate community — i.e., inner city to wild places.
6. Select communities that have landscape diversity. Specifically, where "backyard" places to be saved can be identified as well as more traditional wild lands (e.g., federal land).
7. A coherent yet diverse regional landscape — a context and set of linkages that make sense with variety from urban to wild forested to wetlands.
8. Political context: Can we find the next Chattanooga? Is there a progressive element?
9. Potential to gain broad and bipartisan support for protecting the land.
10. Potential financial or other resources to achieve the vision and opportunities to tap these sources.
11. Other existing and potential strategies for land protection (covering regulation, incentives, and capital improvement/acquisition).
12. The communities selected should be diverse — i.e., East, West, coastal models.

The working group shared its progress with the (WCC) Steering Committee to ensure everyone was able to provide guidance and could buy in to the team's evolving vision. The next task was to identify a variety of places to contact using these basic criteria.

Because working group member had years of experience in the field, most had some places in mind. Each member volunteered to make initial exploratory calls to discuss whether there was a mutual fit and potential for a more detailed conversation. In order to translate the criteria into some talking points for these conversations, we identified seven basic questions to guide the discussion:

1. Vision: If you could imagine no constraints, what would you like to see your region's landscape look like by 2100?
2. Resources available now: Who in the region/what organizations and people are working to effect any part of this vision right now?
3. Resources missing now: What resources, and/or people or organizational commitments are missing from such an effort (and who might be brought into it) right now?
4. Leadership potential: Can you name some of the individuals in your community/region who either are taking some leadership in similar efforts right now, or who could do so, if they were motivated? Who (not necessarily limited to one person) would be the leaders of such an effort?
5. Enthusiasm quotient: Do you think that there is the potential in your community/region to excite people if such a vision were advanced (in the right way, of course)? Would there be enthusiasm for it?
6. Potential funding: If we help you craft this vision, do you think that there might be individuals or institutions in your community/region who might provide financial support to implement this vision (if properly approached)?
7. Existing plans or visioning process: Are there efforts underway to build regional linkages and to identify ways to develop more sustainably?

From there, each working group volunteer made initial contact with several communities around the country. The results of these conversations were reported back both in short write-ups via e-mail and then phone discussion.

Based upon the criteria and our initial reactions from these discussions, we were able to identify four regions that seemed to have the most potential and would make the most sense to engage in a site visit:

• the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, including five coastal cities, and a surrounding six county area;
• greater south central and southeastern Columbus, Ohio, with its rapid suburbanization reaching out toward the hill country, farmland, and recreational resources;
• Spokane–Coeur D'Alene in Washington State and Idaho, a growing corridor surrounded by farm and wild lands;
• the Potomac Watershed, a region with many organizations trying to reach a common goal of connecting people with open space resources.

Once more, the working group communicated its findings and intentions back to the Council Steering Committee for review and buy-in.

Each volunteer group member led the effort to organize the site visit. In each case, personal contacts identified a person in the community to act as local host and coordinator. Part of the evaluation for picking the finalists was the measure of willingness to organize and host a site visit. Each site had very different organization dynamics and different hosts: in Mississippi, it was a mayor; in Spokane–Coeur D'Alene, it was the State Environmental Council and local government agencies.

In each case, the site visit goal was for a team of pilot project working group members to see first-hand what the issues and potential of that area were. The organizers generally put together a combination of briefings and field trips to allow both an overview and opportunity to meet with local groups and individuals as well a look at the opportunities, successes, and challenges.

Each site visit lasted one to two days and was paid for by WCC, with the local hosts usually providing transportation and some amenities such as receptions or meals. The cost of the site visits was modest in relation to the benefit. Each community said that even if it doesn't go any further, just preparing for the site visit and having the opportunity to meet with interested outsiders — and locals who rarely get together — was a great benefit in itself. A detailed report was prepared on each site visit, and these were shared with the communities as well as WCC's steering committee.

Just seven months from the first working group meeting, we met in Idaho for a Steering Committee retreat to discuss the pilot projects and chart the next steps. The discussions of the cases were fascinating and informative and will be written about later in more detail.

The basic concerns of the land conservation movement were summarized in the needs to connect more people to land and natural resources, education, outreach to members of communities who often are left out of decision-making loops, and the importance of creating a sympathetic and integrated set of regional, state, and national policies aimed at assisting local communities that are working together.

Team leaders described each project, then the group discussed these basic goals to determine the fit. The group reached consensus on three pilot projects to pursue. While the Potomac Watershed was considered an important expression of the issues, the group didn't have much confidence that a modest coalition such as White Cloud could have the same level of impact there as in the other three areas. In addition, the Wilderness Society had already committed some resources toward the Potomac objectives.

We went back to the original host from each site and asked if each was willing to embrace the goals of a regional strategy for land conservation, a community education and involvement effort, and assist in identifying and securing local and regional support for the program. Each leader was enthusiastic, and we followed up with a letter describing the next steps. We intend to prepare for a more in-depth workshop with a broader array of local interests to come together with White Cloud Steering Committee members selected for the specific expertise most useful to each particular region. This workshop will be held over the next two months with the goal of a three-year work plan and targets for resources, both technical and financial in place by February of 2001, less than one year after the Council identified the need for on the ground projects.

Each demonstration area is now working on the following outcomes:

• Establishing a regional database of priority projects
• Providing a leadership structure that provides a "brain trust" of diverse interests
• Implementation plans for a comprehensive program adopted by the leadership
• Establishing a fully developed vision and public education program to ensure broad support