QLF is one of the newest partners in the Staying Connected Initiative (SCI), a cutting-edge bi-national, public-private collaboration dedicated to conserving and restoring an ecologically well-connected landscape for native wildlife and people in the Northern Appalachian-Acadian/Wabanaki region of northeastern North America. This region, spanning more than 80 million acres (32 million hectares), is globally significant as one of the largest remaining areas of mixed temperate forest in the world. It also is a key part of the continentally significant forested corridor provided by the broader Appalachian Mountain chain for species migrating northward in response to climate change.
Launched in 2009, SCI has expanded to include more than 70 partners, including governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, and others in the northeastern U.S., eastern Canada, and beyond. These diverse collaborators are implementing an integrated, multifaceted strategy to protect and enhance terrestrial and aquatic connectivity at a number of scales, including a focus on key habitat linkages that connect large forest blocks across the region. SCI’s holistic approach integrates land protection, land use planning, community and landowner engagement, projects to help wildlife move safely across roadways, and policy work. These efforts are all grounded in the latest scientific research and are woven together through effective coordination at multiple scales to maximize conservation impact.
In June 2024, QLF co-hosted the first-ever Northeastern North America/Turtle Island Connectivity Summit in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke, Québec, Canada on behalf of the SCI partnership, alongside the Center for Large Landscape Conservation (CLLC). The Summit brought together over 170 conservation leaders and practitioners to build relationships, share perspectives and approaches, and chart a path for accelerating ecological connectivity conservation and restoration within and across borders in the region.
Building on the powerful energy and ideas generated at the Summit, QLF is leading the development with CLLC and other SCI partners of a high-level “roadmap” of key opportunities, strategies, and actions to better connect, conserve, and restore ecosystems across the five eastern-most Canadian provinces, seven northeastern-most U.S. states, and many Indigenous territories of the region. QLF and other SCI partners will be using this roadmap in the coming years to help guide collaborative transborder efforts, leverage new partnerships, and secure unprecedented amounts of funding for landscape-scale conservation that is currently available in the U.S. and Canda.
