Dakota Conservation Network is the involvement of community stakeholders in natural resources conservation planning. It’s as simple – local people addressing local issues.
Stakeholders are anyone in the local community who would benefit from the improvement of the surrounding soil, water, animals, plants, energy, and air. That’s right – everyone is considered a stakeholder. However, the majority of land in South Dakota is privately owned. So, to make long-standing impacts on our natural resources, these conservation projects must include landowners. Without cooperation and teamwork, large scale conservation plans will be difficult.
Conservation planning can be any plan to improve natural resources. It starts with identifying natural resource concerns – an expected degradation of a natural resource – and putting together a plan to address them. A conservation plan can cover any number of acres of all shapes and size. A conservation plan consists of three main topics:
The idea behind Dakota Conservation Network is that local people are best suited to address local issues. It is not any more special than any one landowner deciding to fix an issue. What sets this network apart is that an issue was identified as important by multiple stakeholders, and acted upon by those stakeholders as a group. That group of people working together to address the same issues can have a greater impact on the improvement of our natural resources.
Contact your local conservation district office! Let them know what your concerns are with the natural resources around you. Understanding the concerns of stakeholders is the first step of putting a plan together – and the most important. The people in this office are your local experts on conservation planning and programming.