The National Fish & Wildlife Foundation and partners recently completed a web-based series focused on regional-scale water quality collaboratives, recognized as critical and effective vehicles for advancing and accelerating Chesapeake Bay watershed restoration goals at meaningful scales.
The resources gathered from this series are now available online.  The program focused on Chesapeake Bay restoration practitioners and stakeholders who explored and elevated understanding of what constitutes effective, regional-scale collaborative approaches for Bay restoration, including the key factors that contribute to their success and how collaboratives evolve, adapt, and mature to sustain progress.

The series was especially developed for conservation partners interested in pursuing NFWF’s Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction (INSR) Grants Program or other grants programs supporting collaborative development and growth, to provide insights on what makes for a competitive, INSR-ready collaborative restoration proposal based on both research and practice.

Each session and accompanying resources are now available online at the links provided below:

  1. Regional Collaborative Partnerships – Raising the Bar for Improving Bay Water Quality
  2. Interstate Regional Collaboratives: Grazing and Wetlands
  3. Basin Watershed Collaboratives: Riparian Buffers and Herding Cats
  4. Urban Collaboratives: Targeting Cities and Interesting Infrastructures
  5. Agricultural and Rural Collaboratives: The Shenandoah Valley -Resources, Relationship & Effective Process

Chesapeake Bay partners who are interested in developing a collaborative approach, particularly in context with a future NFWF INSR proposal, are strongly encouraged to review the session titled (1) “Regional Collaborative Partnerships – Raising the Bar for Improving Bay Water Quality” and also consider one of the sessions that explores collaborative models within the a specific context or landscape, e.g. (2) interstate-, (3) basin-, (4) urban-, or (5) agricultural and rural- based regional-scale collaboratives.