Public land managers and neighboring towns and cities—often referred to as gateway communities—are building their collaboration through a program cosponsored by the Institute and a consortium of partners in the Gateway Communities Leadership Program. Over the last five years, the partners have worked together to create a multidimensional program that builds the capacity of public land managers and gateway communities to collaboratively identify and address issues of mutual concern. The program includes national course offerings, tailored regional and community workshops, interactive television workshops, case study videos, and publications.

Every two years, a national training course, “Balancing Nature and Commerce in Gateway Communities,” offers assistance to public land–gateway community teams to plan and carry out collaborative community-based initiatives. During the workshop, teams of public land and community representatives work together to craft strategies that can be implemented in their home regions. Offered in Seattle in September 2002 and in Savannah in October 2003, the national course attracted teams from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the neighboring Nantahala National Forest, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Cape Lookout National Seashore, and Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Parks, among others.

Alaska workshop participant Photo: Nora Mitchell

Often requests for follow-up workshops and technical assistance originate with teams that attend the national course. This was the case with the teams from Denali National Park and Preserve (Alaska) and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway (Minnesota and Wisconsin). Follow-up technical assistance from CSI Director of Community Engagement Delia Clark assisted the Alaska team with conducting a vision-to-action workshop that launched a community conservation and sustainable development initiative complementing national park efforts to develop the new Denali south-side visitor center. The team from the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway developed a series of eight regional workshops in 2003 designed to address the needs of communities along the 25-mile-long river corridor. These workshops created a sense of regional identity and a common agenda among the communities along the two-state river valley.