As part of Center for Native Ecosystems’ work with the Colorado agricultural community on endangered species conservation, we held the Summit on Improving Conservation Incentive Programs last Wednesday in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.  Twenty-five Colorado ranchers, farmers, conservation leaders came together to discuss ways of working together on improving endangered species protections for landowners and endangered species.

The meeting was co-hosted by Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, American Farmland Trust and Center for Native Ecosystems and started with an exercise in finding common ground and shared values, followed by presentations on conservation incentive programs and the Endangered Species Act and ended with workshops on the experiences of and ideas for improving conservation incentive programs.  From these workshops we gathered more than a dozen ideas for crafting language that we hope to use in a proposal that enjoys broad support of the agriculture and conservation communities. We will then advocate together for these changes in the 2007 congress. 

About the conservation and agriculture communities working together, one of the agricultural leaders had this to say:

This is an exciting time for us – for the longest time ranchers and farmers did their thing and environmentalists did theirs. But the barriers of distrust and status quo between environmental and agriculture communities have been broken. There are those on the fringes of both sides that will continue to take issue with the other side, but for the rest of us – we have begun working together on a common agenda and can achieve great things together.