Landcare is a holistic approach to sustainable land and natural resource management. Landcare involves people working together to care for the land and doing so in a way that improves the triple bottom-line of social, environmental, and economic benefits. It is a win-win opportunity for individual landowners, their local communities, and the larger society. Landcare projects take place in both urban and rural areas, bridging the institutional boundaries that often divide agriculture, forestry, the green industry, and related forms of land and natural resource management. State agencies and professional land and natural resource managers are involved but it is groups of local landowners who set the pace and drive the agenda.

Landcare produces:

• good jobs, improved taxation, thriving industry;
• enhanced education programs and student experiences;
• improved natural resource management and environmental conditions;
• corporate, state, and urban sponsors for innovative landcare programs;
• thousands of new groups implementing landcare projects;
• relevant and effective university research, outreach, and community engagement;
• successful partnerships between government, civic organizations, businesses, and communities.

Where it came from:

The LandCare movement originated in Australia in the late 1980s (there are now approximately 4,000 LandCare involving 40 percent of the farmers who manage 60 percent of the land and 70 percent of the nation’s diverted waters). Faced with unprecedented environmental and economic challenges to existing agriculture and forest management, the Victoria state government initiated a program bringing together all stakeholders including farmers, government agencies, university scientists, purveyors of agricultural and forestry technologies, buyers and processors of agriculture and forest commodities, and financial institutions to chose mutually beneficial paths to the future. With all of the players that influence natural resource management at the table, solutions within the means of each stakeholder group were quickly discovered and remedial actions taken. In the past 20 years, landcare has since spread to a dozen other countries including the United States.

How it works:

LandCare programs can be state-sponsored, market-driven, and/or community-based solutions for restorative development of private lands and public ecosystems. Public-private partnership, especially state and corporate sponsorship to support the participation of individual landowners and their local communities, is a key ingredient of success. One shining example of a successful landcare program, is in Grayson County, Virginia where recent state support for Jerry Moles and the New River Land Trust provided the external resource necessary to help local landowners and their communities build the capacity for improved agriculture, forestry, and water management. As a result, Grayson LandCare (www.publicecology.org/graysonlandcare) is now a flagship for the emerging LandCare movement in the United States.

Landcare has captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide. The landcare movement has achieved considerable success internationally, especially in Australia where there are 5000+ landcare groups and 85% of citizens recognize the landcare logo. In the Philippines, there are now 500 landcare organizations. Landcare programs have recently developed in a dozen other countries. Bold leadership and public-private partnership, especially state, corporate, and urban sponsorship for landowners and their communities, are keys to the success of this movement.

In the US, numerous government agencies and professional associations are now promoting the landcare movement. At the national level, these include,

• Landcare Pioneers (including USDA and others)
• National Association of Regional Councils
• National Association of Conservation Districts
• National Association of Resource Conservation & Development Councils

There is need for additional leadership on the part of colleges and universities, extension services, watershed and land trust alliances, state agencies, municipalities, and others.

In Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region, a long and growing list of participants are active in the landcare movement. A few of the specific organizations involved at this time are

• Grayson LandCare
• New River Land Trust
• Blue Ridge Forest Cooperative
• Virginia Tech
• Virginia Cooperative Extension
  
• Carroll-Grayson Cattle Producers Association
• Ward Burton Wildlife Foundation
• National Fish & Wildlife Foundation
• Numerous local Conservation Districts, Resource Conservation & Development Councils, Regional Commissions, Watershed Roundtables, Extension Districts, etc.

The defining characteristic of each of these initiatives is the empowerment of local communities to build robust local economies that improve quality of life while restoring and sustaining valuable environmental qualities. We invite new partners to join us in promoting these initiatives and the movement as a whole.