Conservation Strategies
A fundamental component of the BRBNA Conservation Framework is identifying and promoting individual and collaborative strategies for partners, stakeholders and others to achieve the conservation vision and provide long-term stewardship of the BRBNA. These strategies include:

• Research and Planning
• Land Protection
• Stewardship
• Sustainable Economic Development
• Outreach and Education

Research and Planning
A key role for the Partnership has been to link research to conservation objectives and continue to promote research on topics where it is most needed.  Collecting baseline data has been one important objective in order to establish the existing condition of resources and conservation values of the BRBNA.  The vegetation mapping project has provided a wealth of information to guide protection and stewardship programs in the region.  Ongoing research and monitoring can also begin to fill the gaps in information and document changes from impacts and restoration efforts. New data can assist resource managers in their efforts to develop policies, plan conservation strategies, and design technical assistance programs. Biologists and other researchers at U.C. Davis and the McLaughlin Reserve have lead the way in establishing a significant compendium of research while they continue to investigate and publish on important topics for the region.  Research on cultural resources is also underway by archeologists at Sonoma State University, the BLM, and others.

Good planning is essential in implementing many conservation efforts. Many agencies and organizations have plans that address lands specific to their region or county.  Counties have General Plans, Land Trusts often have strategic plans, and agencies typically have management plans.  To the extent possible, this draft framework incorporates and reflects those plans.  Ensuring the full integration and consistency of these plans relative to the conservation vision of the BRBNA as a whole is worthy of attention and an important role for the Partnership (see Appendix I for a complete list of existing plans and reports).

Land Protection
Land protection is an important part of a long-term conservation strategy. The BRBNA includes a combination of public conservation and recreation lands, semi-public conservation lands, and private property. Identifying strategic parcels for protection, ensuring ongoing communication with landowners and developers, and networking with potential partners about land saving opportunities are essential elements of land protection.

Land protection tools result in permanent protection of land. These tools can ensure that land is managed in a manner consistent with both the owner's objectives and the conservation and stewardship goals developed for the BRBNA. The three most frequently used strategies for land protection are fee title purchase, conservation easements, and zoning regulations. (See Appendix J for more information on the variety of land protection strategies available).  Land can be purchased outright by a public agency or land trust in order to permanently preserve the property.  A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or public agency that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values. Land protection can also be achieved by enacting new zoning regulations or amending existing zoning to promote land use activities that are compatible with BRBNA conservation goals.

Stewardship
Stewardship involves the active management and caring of land and resources to ensure the health of ecosystems and natural processes over time.  While land acquisition and conservation easements can begin the process of protection for some lands, long-term monitoring, restoration, and other types of management are often needed to ensure that resources values are enhanced or preserved.  On private lands, particularly those used for ranching, stewardship activities are the major conservation tools available to the landowner to enhance the productivity and value of their land while achieving BRBNA conservation objectives.  Stewardship opportunities for landowners are available in many handbooks developed by agencies and organizations such as RCDs and Cooperative Extension (contact information can be found in Appendix A). A few fundamental strategies are key to stewardship efforts in the BRBNA.

Adaptive Management
Adaptive management is a relatively new concept, but one that is increasingly being used in the stewardship community.  Adaptive management incorporates research into conservation action, integrating the plans, management and monitoring of conservation efforts so that practitioners can adapt and learn.  Through this process, learning from successes and failures allows for continually improving projects and management.  The Partnership has from its inception supported a science-based approach to conservation, consistent with the idea of adaptive management. 

Protection, Restoration and Enhancement
Protection of important habitat and sensitive species is part of any stewardship program.  In the BRBNA, management efforts must consider the best approaches to ensuring such protection on both private and public lands.  Obviously, these issues become take on a different perspective with regard to private lands, but through appropriate incentives and stewardship programs, public/private partnerships can develop that provide workable strategies for habitat and species protection across property boundaries.  Many landowners with conservation easements on their property have entered into partnerships that implement stewardship efforts.  Other landowners work with their county RCDs toward similar objectives.  This Framework and its detailed database are already being used as the basis for multi-land owner, multi-agency collaborative stewardship planning and implementation programs for the riparian, grassland, and oak woodland habitats in the Knoxville/Eticuera watersheds north of Lake Berryessa.  In the BRBNA, it is critical that the information now available about the occurrence of vegetations types and rare and sensitive species be made readily available and easily accessible to resource managers and landowners alike, and that adjacent landowners work together on their stewardship efforts.

Restoration and enhancement activities provide on the ground solutions to resource issues such as erosion, invasive non-native plant and wildlife species, degraded water quality, habitat protection, and restoration of degraded areas. Specific project efforts generally begin with assessment and planning, followed by implementation and monitoring.  Support for collaborative programs in such endeavors is a key Partnership strategy for promoting stewardship.  The Knoxville/Eticuera watershed vegetation management effort currently underway is one example of this collaborative approach.  While the U.C. Natural Reserve and Fish and Game are in the third year of a joint program to control Tamarisk in the upper half of the watershed, the NRCS and U.C. Extension have initiated a collaborative effort to develop and implement a vegetation management and stewardship program for the entire watershed, involving a number of agencies, landowners and environmental organizations.  Evaluation of prospective management strategies will be based in part on recent research on post fire ecology conducted by a team of U.C. scientists based at the McLaughlin Reserve.

Technical Assistance and Incentive Programs
Many public agencies provide technical assistance to landowners to conduct stewardship activities on their lands.  Resource Conservation Districts, U.C. Cooperative Extension and even some non-profits groups provide technical assistance and funding to landowners to carry out projects aimed at erosion control, water quality improvement, fire management, riparian restoration and invasive species control.  A key strategy promoted by the Partnership is to help ensure that landowners are aware of opportunities for assistance and that to the degree possible, technical assistance and training are coordinated within the BRBNA.  Moreover, successful programs have demonstrated that landowners respond best to incentive programs that pay close attention to their needs and concerns, allow for their full participation in decision-making, and provide tangible benefits in a reasonable time frame.  The Partnership is well positioned to encourage further research and outreach to assess the opinions, needs and concerns of BRBNA landowners and help apply this information to relevant programs and projects.

Sustainable Economic Development
Economic variables are often the stimulus to environmental impacts and inappropriate land uses.  As mentioned previously, regional growth and its attendant economic impacts could create incompatible pressures for the development of housing and commercial enterprises within the BRBNA.  A key strategy for conserving the natural resource values of the BRBNA is to explore avenues for meeting local and regional economic needs in a manner that is both sustainable and beneficial for long-term conservation.  Appropriate economic generators such as ranching operations and nature-based recreation add value to the land and provide an enduring rationale for its protection.  Economic value can be linked directly with conservation value to create a large constituency of conservation supporters including non-traditional entities such as businesses and local governments.

Maintaining and enhancing the viability of the BRBNA's working ranchlands depends in part on preserving a critical mass of ranches and un-fragmented ranchland acreage.  Other important factors relative to the viability of the area's working ranches include ensuring adequate agricultural support services, preventing the subdivision of ranches into estate lots or ranchettes, and promoting ranching and the sale of agricultural products as part of a sustainable economic development strategy for the BRBNA. Zoning that is supportive of agriculture (e.g. large minimum lots sizes with limited allowable development) is also an important part of maintaining agricultural viability. The local community can help support ranching by purchasing local products and supporting zoning amendments supportive of agriculture.

It is also essential that the five counties included in the BRBNA, as well as the local communities that border the BRBNA, derive economic benefits from conservation of the region. Tourists and recreational visitors provide enormous opportunity for local revenue when they purchase food, supplies and overnight accommodations from local businesses. Promotion of nature-based recreation and appropriate visitor services at Lake Berryessa are an important means of directing revenue to local and gateway businesses and communities.

Public and Landowner Outreach and Education
Outreach and education are an essential component of a regional conservation effort as they increase awareness about the values associated with the land and the threats to the BRBNA and build a constituency of defenders and promoters of the region. Through a variety of mediums, the environmental, economic, recreational, agricultural and cultural importance of BRBNA resources can be communicated. Some of the ways the Partnership and its partners can engage and educate landowners and the public include small group meetings, workshops, presentations to community groups, newspaper articles, boat or van tours, guided hikes, brochures, slide shows, Web sites, volunteer monitoring efforts, festivals, and school group activities. The Partnership has conducted significant outreach and educational efforts to date and will continue to expand its outreach efforts related to the Conservation Framework.

Engaging additional private landowners in the conservation of the BRBNA depends largely on an effective outreach and education program.  Landowner education can serve to increase awareness among landowners regarding the BRBNA and the connection of their land to the larger region as well as provide information regarding how to implement good stewardship practices.  By promoting collaboration and by serving as a clearinghouse for information and publications related to a broad range of land protection and stewardship issues for area landowners, the Partnership can promote voluntary conservation efforts for private land as part of a regional approach to the entire BRBNA.