Urban Lights is a collection of stories and learnings from across the country, showcasing the breadth and depth of innovative work in the urban sphere from coast to coast. The programs and partnerships featured here illustrate a variety of relationships between public lands and urban communities. These stories shine a light on new approaches to working and illuminate a path forward for parks and programs working in urban areas.
Scaling Up: Collaborative Approaches to Large Landscape Conservation, 2014
Published jointly by NPS Chesapeake Bay Office and NPS Stewardship Institute
This publication contains a collection of 20 examples of parks, programs and initiatives that are already working at landscape scale. The sampling represents varied sizes, complexities, geography, and vision. They show that large landscape conservation is not new to the National Park Service. As the pace of change quickens, and the need grows, more and more parks and partners are answering the call to "scale up" their efforts.
Expanding Horizons: Highlights from the National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation 2014
Expanding Horizons summarizes the National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation. The report stresses a multi-disciplinary, networked approach to finding solutions that benefit human, wildlife, cultural and ecological health. The report was developed by QLF Atlantic Center through a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service Stewardship Institute.
Beyond Outreach Handbook: A Guide to Designing Effective Programs to Engage Diverse Communities, 2011
Engaging the full spectrum of Americans in the stewardship of our parks and special places is now recognized as crucial to the future of our national park system. This handbook represents an important tool to assist National Park Service (NPS) managers and practitioners and their partners in developing programs that successfully connect diverse communities with their local national parks. It guides practitioners through an assessment that identifies gaps in readiness and informs the development of an effective engagement strategy. The handbook is based on a research project that probed what constitutes good practices for engaging diverse communities and enhancing the relevancy of the national park system.
Leading in a Collaborative Environment: Six Case Studies Involving Collaboration and Civic Engagement, 2010
These case studies address some of the most challenging situations facing NPS superintendents today. In addition to being useful to managers at various levels within the NPS, the case studies and the common leadership strategies and practices are also relevant to conservation practitioners outside of the NPS working in similar situations.
Learning to be Better Neighbors: Case Studies in Civic Engagement between National Parks and Neighboring Communities, 2006
This handbook discusses five different models of civic engagement, and uses case studies (“success stories”) to illustrate how people worked together to create effective community–public land initiatives. Each case study includes a set of “success factors” that can help guide others interested in learning about effective community engagement.
Stewardship Begins With People: An Atlas of Places, People & Handmade Products, 2007 (Paper copies only. Request copies from: e-mail us) This report marks the culmination of a multi-year research project on heritage-based products that began with planning for the historic Mount Tom forest at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller NHP. Concurrent with these discussions, there has been growing interest in finding ways to enhance the cultural and economic sustainability of distinctive regional identities. Congress recently demonstrated its interest as well, asking the NPS to explore viable ways to encourage sale of traditional products in national parks. Several international exchanges with Italy and with the Czech Republic provided added stimulus and ideas for this Atlas.
Collaboration and Conservation: Lessons Learned from National Park Service Partnership Areas in the Western United States, 2004
This workshop report distills partnership lessons learned and key components of successful partnership areas from a diversity of federal and private practitioners and examination of a series of case studies. The participants also identify a set of strategic recommendations for creating a sustainable environment for partnerships.
Last updated: June 15, 2023