“It’s all about co-creation.”
Meredith Hill spent fifteen years at Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources managing the Conservation Landscape Program before her recent retirement. She believes that no agency, no organization, no community can accomplish conservation at scale alone.
Today, Meredith joins our host Marci Mowery to discuss a program that has quietly reshaped how Pennsylvania thinks about land, community, and the relationship between the two.
Born out of a visionary leader’s statewide listening tour in the early 2000s, the program designated eight multi-county regions across Pennsylvania, each united by shared values but driven by the distinct needs of its place.
In the Wilds, the priority was building a sustainable outdoor recreation economy around vast public lands to revitalize rural communities. In the Lehigh Valley, it was stitching green corridors together before open space disappeared forever.
The program is driven, says Meredith, by trust. After all, it takes years to build, and it requires DCNR staff to step outside their bureaus and work shoulder to shoulder with local partners.
Trust, in turn, produces the remarkable. Think of a network of local artisans selling handmade goods in state park shops; county planners meeting every other month for nearly two decades; communities like Galeton intentionally dimming their streetlights to protect a night sky that draws stargazers from across the world!
Key Topics:
- What Is the Conservation Landscape Program? (01:42)
- Pennsylvania’s Eight Landscapes (03:31)
- Building Trust Across Diverse Partners (11:25)
- The PA Wilds Cooperative: Artisans, Entrepreneurs, and Local Business (14:53)
- One Experience Every Pennsylvanian Should Have: Dark Skies (23:16)
- Pennsylvania as a Model for Other States (26:30)
- Measuring Progress Over Twenty Years (28:30)
- Why Conservation Landscapes Matter (31:08)
- Agriculture, Solar, and the Hard Conversations (35:08)
Resources:
The Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Foundation inspires stewardship of YOUR state parks and forests through volunteerism, education, recreation, and philanthropy.
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🎶 Podcast music provided by Evan Mongeau
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