Collaborating for Healthier Communities

Highlights from the 2024 RCP Network Gathering

*The five editors of* From the Ground Up: Marissa Latshaw, David Foster, Brian Donahue, Liz Thompson, Alex Redfield (from left to right). Photo © Marissa Latshaw

The From the Ground Up editors had the rare chance to be together in person at the RCP Network Gathering in Amherst on November 14. We divided up so we could experience many of the sessions and share the highlights here. This year’s theme, “Collaborating for Healthier Communities,” explored the connection between the environment and its impact on human health—our bodies, our minds, and our communities. Each session looked at different facets of our relationship with nature, the effects of the changing climate on communities, and the actions we can take to care for ourselves and this Earth we call home.

Highstead’s Regional Conservationist Katie Blake set the stage for the day with a heartfelt story that illustrated the therapeutic effects of nature in her own life. After a painful breakup many years ago, she camped for four months on Penikese Island in Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay as part of her graduate studies in Conservation Biology. Immersed in nature, Blake learned to navigate the relentlessly dive-bombing Common and Roseate Terns while forming bonds with the herons and egrets, and their babies, in their rookery. Through this experience, she refueled her mental health and found her life’s work. What better way to kick off the day—reminding us of the many ways that nature cares for us and keeps us healthy.

Below we share just some of the highlights from the sessions we attended.

Liz Thompson on the Keynote: Climate Change, Land, and Your Brain: A Hundred-Year Global Story with Ann-Christine Duhaime, MD

*Ann-Christine Duhaime.* Photo courtesy of College of Physicians of Philadelphia

Ann-Christine Duhaime is a brain surgeon and neuroscientist. What was she doing at a conservation conference? She came to talk about the climate crisis, and she started with a disclaimer: “I am not a climate scientist.”

She was moved to learn about the climate crisis, and consider how we might solve it, by seeing a photo of a young boy whose life she had saved through surgery. In the photo, sent with a note of gratitude from the boy’s mom, he is viewing a beautiful New England landscape from the top of a fire tower, which he was intent on climbing in spite of the physical challenges he faced following the surgery. Dr. Duhaime wondered about the boy’s future—and humanity’s future—in a climate-challenged world.

Though not a climate scientist, Dr. Duhaime does know, deeply and viscerally through training and long experience, how the brain works. She knows that humans are adapted to respond to positive signals in the brain—dopamine among them. When we do things that stimulate the pleasure centers in the brain, we are motivated to do those things again. It’s all about survival and perpetuation of the species. She explores this in her 2022 book, Minding the Climate. From the publisher’s description of the book: “[Dr. Duhaime] points to the evolution of the human brain during eons of resource scarcity. Understandably, the brain adapted to prioritize short-term survival over more uncertain long-term outcomes. But the resulting behavioral architecture is poorly suited to the present, when scarcity is a lesser concern and slow-moving, novel challenges like environmental issues present the greatest danger.”

Our behaviors, then, tend to be responsive to short-term pleasure and gain—looking for the next meal or seeking safety from predators. Duhaime shared that our brains are not adapted to respond to very long-term signals, positive or negative.

We know intellectually that the carbon in the atmosphere is reaching dangerous levels. We’ve all seen the alarming graphs. But we do not feel the immediate pain, nor do we feel immediate pleasure when we act individually to influence that trend. So, we become complacent. We buy. We play. We eat. We drink. Maybe too much of all of these things. We get in our cars and drive to the beach. We get on planes and fly to exotic places. We may think about the environmental consequences of such things, but we do them anyway.

*Ann-Christine Duhaime leaves us with some key messages.*

Duhaime left us with the good news that the brain is adaptable, and the reward centers can be retrained to respond to different signals. What are those signals? What could send a pleasure reward? Not doom and gloom—no, the reward has to be positive. Among the positive rewards are connection with others, a sense of purpose, and knowledge that there is public commitment to the problem at hand. These are things that can give us pleasure and hope, and if we tap into them, can help us to move from complacency to positive, energized action.

Marissa Latshaw on Green & Blue Spaces: Pathways to Better Health with Robert Feder, Climate Psychiatry Alliance, New Hampshire Healthy Climate, Medical Society Consortium for Climate and Health, and No Coal No Gas; and Nicole Kras, The City University of New York

*Dr. Robert Feder of Climate Psychiatry Alliance.* Photo courtesy of Highstead

Dr. Robert Feder gave us a broad view of the research and meta-analyses that show the positive connections between green space and human health. He shared the many different methods used to measure green space and health outcomes in different studies. For green spaces, some have used simple factors like proximity, type (grass or tree canopy), size, and density. As he shared the studies, he pointed out the nuanced and sometimes surprising findings. For example, he looked at a meta-analysis of 68 studies between 1970 and 2021 that concluded that green spaces with tree canopy, but not grassland, helped to reduce cases of asthma, high blood pressure, and heart attacks while improving feelings of well-being.

Another analysis of 59 studies from 2013 to 2023 concluded that high green space exposure was associated with 5 to 15 percent lower incidence of depression, anxiety, dementia, schizophrenia, and ADHD.

Dr. Feder also walked us through a longitudinal study in Denmark that followed 943,000 individuals born between 1985 and 2003. Those who had the lowest exposure to green space in childhood had 55 percent higher incidence of mental illness compared to those with the highest green space exposure. The results were independent of urban settings, economics, and parental history. His overall conclusion from all of these studies is that there is a resounding connection between exposure to green space and mental and physical health.

Dr. Nicole Kras of The City University of New York followed Dr. Feder. She gave us a look into some studies that she is conducting that examine the mental health of island dwellers off the coast of New England (Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Block Island). The sample sizes were small (~60 subjects), but the conclusions showed a favorable connection between island living and mental health benefits. Ninety-five percent of the subjects indicated that nature had positively influenced their mental well-being during the pandemic. They shared that being in nature helped to reduce stress and anxiety, and used words like “paramount,” “critical,” and “essential” to describe the impact that nature had on their mental health.

Brian Donahue on The Land Conservation and Climate Mitigation Nexus: Flood Resilience with Brian Bannon, Town of Brattleboro; Marie Levesque Caduto, Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation; Erin De Vries, Vermont River Conservancy; and Hayley Kolding, Vermont River Conservancy

*Erin De Vries of Vermont River Conservancy with a workshop participant.*

This engaging workshop illustrated a collaborative conservation effort involving several state and federal agencies, a nonprofit, and a municipality. It epitomized the integrated approach promoted by Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities in From the Ground Up. The case involved the protection and restoration of an abandoned 12-acre industrial site in the Whetstone Brook watershed on the outskirts of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Like many lands along streams, the place had seen more than a century’s worth of straightening, embankments, and fill, and could no longer perform its floodplain function. Situated where the steep brook exited the hills and hit the flats, under natural conditions the waters from sudden heavy rains would have spread out and lost much of their sediment and force. Instead, floodwaters were shot ahead through a narrowed channel, inundating low-lying and poorer neighborhoods of Brattleboro downstream. Following particularly damaging floods from tropical storm Irene in 2011, a statewide resiliency initiative identified the Birge Street parcel as critical for restoration.

Multiple agencies and funding sources were tapped under the leadership of the Vermont River Conservancy (VRC). Archaeological sites were identified and protected. Contaminated soil and old berms were removed, adding water-holding depth to the floodplain. The site was revegetated and a trail put in, giving the neighborhood a prime piece of open space. In December of this year, the parcel will be transferred to the town of Brattleboro, with the VRC holding an easement.

In this time when so many opportunities to do the right thing with multiple co-benefits seem to be hamstrung by various economic and political barriers, it was heartening to hear an example of groups pulling together and managing a complex and daunting project.

*After hearing about the Birge Street Project and Whetstone Brook, participants looked at maps of other areas to see if they could identify similar problem spots along streams.* Photo courtesy of Highstead

Alex Redfield on Where are the Black People? Restrictive Covenants in Rural Areas with Chris Carr, Black Land Ownership

*Chris Carr of Black Land Ownership.* Photo courtesy of Highstead

Around the region and around the country, conservation organizations are dedicating significant time, money, and effort to making conservation lands and protected open space more accessible. This can mean, among other things, protecting urban parks for increased access to green space and creating new programs that invite diverse communities into the most natural and wild corners of New England. This work represents a key component of a broader effort to integrate justice and equity into the future of the conservation movement. Chris Carr’s session, building on this momentum, provided a clear and compelling call for conservation organizations to recognize how access alone is insufficient in the context of sophisticated, consistent, and entirely “legal” efforts to both steal land owned by Black families and to exclude them from the landscape entirely.

Carr offered a comprehensive analysis of the roots of New England’s whiteness, citing the countless state and federal laws and court decisions that combined to prevent Black land ownership. Challenging commonly held assumptions that are often deployed to explain our region’s whiteness (“humans are naturally tribal and want to stay close to their own” or “Black people moved to Northern cities to find jobs but those opportunities didn’t exist in the rural North”), Carr asked participants to recognize that making true progress toward equity will require a shift in how resources are held, how communities are built, and how economies are developed. If people of color are afforded the benefits of land ownership that white landowners enjoy, particularly the opportunities to provide for their community and to build generational wealth, it is a clear and direct step toward a broader transformation of our landscape.

The session masterfully provided a call to action for the movement as a whole; outlined the challenges that must be reckoned with before a just transition occurs; and welcomed participants to learn, share, and reflect on how we, as individuals, can proceed in community and in collaboration.

David Foster on Future Forest Reimagined: Building Resilience for Ecological Recovery and Community Wellbeing with Christine Laporte, Wildlands Network, and Nancy Patch, Two Countries, One Forest; Cold Hollow to Canada; and Wildlands Network

With my long background working to advance the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities initiative, the session led by Nancy Patch (Two Countries, One Forest; Cold Hollow to Canada) and Christine LaPorte (Wildlands Network) was a highlight of this year’s Gathering. Future Forests Reimagined: Building Resilience for Ecological Recovery and Community Wellbeing shares much with our work but on a grander scale. It is a transboundary initiative involving Canada, the United States, and the Wabanaki Confederacy that integrates old forest protection, rewilding, and ecological forestry to address the three crises facing the region and globe: biodiversity loss, climate change, and declining human well-being.

The scale and social commitment of this effort is notable. Through a series of workshops and meetings it has brought together 157 American, 89 Canadian, and 24 Indigenous participants to focus on the Northern Appalachian-Acadian-Wabanaki Bioregion to address these environmental and social challenges, with a strong focus on Indigenous and rural populations.

Patch led off the session with a talk on the environmentally destructive history of the region and the historical and ecological thinking that grounds her own work. She and Laporte then explored the workshops and roundtables that focused on identifying and protecting the region’s remaining wildlands, accelerating rewilding of forests at broad scales, and increasing truly ecological management for the region as a whole. Laporte finished the session with a compelling perspective on the potential for regional integration across these spheres of wild forest protection, ecological forestry, and old forest restoration.

Due to the strong commitment to social and environmental justice informed by traditional and Indigenous perspectives, both speakers referenced the workshops, meetings, and the future effort as a journey through which all will continue to learn. Certainly, the participants in this session left having learned much themselves.

Alex Redfield on State of the States: Conservation and Land-Use Policy Around the Region with Jamey Fidel, Vermont Natural Resources Council; David Foster, Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities; Brian Hall, Harvard Forest; and Alex Redfield, Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities

*Alex Redfield, Brian Hall, Jamey Fidel, and David Foster present preliminary findings.*

Despite their differences, the six New England states face many of the same challenges in land use and conservation policy. Forests are being lost to development; existing housing stocks are insufficient for the current demand; and the rural character and economies central to the region’s identity and vitality are struggling to persist through a changing climate and a global marketplace built on extraction and growth. This session introduced a forthcoming report from Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities (WWF&C) comparing state-level policy tools currently used by the six New England states to simultaneously protect working lands and rural economies, safeguard diverse and vibrant ecosystems, and chart a future that allows for thriving and equitable communities. The report, State of the States: Conservation and Land Use Policy Around the Region, will be shared in greater detail in a future issue of From the Ground Up. Interested readers can learn more and sign up for updates here.

Alex Redfield and Brian Hall shared preliminary findings from this research effort. They presented a new analysis on the rate of forest loss in the region, highlighting hot spots for forest conversion in the region. They showed data identifying similarities and differences in how each state uses Current Use property tax programs to protect natural and working lands. And they shared a preliminary survey on how states have (or have not) integrated principles of racial and environmental justice in law and in state programs.

To illustrate the value of regional analysis and interstate policy coordination, Jamey Fidel shared reflections on recent policy wins in Vermont that both secured significant improvements to the state’s growth management program and set ambitious targets for land conservation and biodiversity protection in the coming decades.

Panelist perspectives on the value of regional analysis for state-level policy work and for regional network development provided a strong foundation for future collaboration. Innovative and effective policy tools are being developed, tested, and deployed in each New England state. Sharing these tools and related reflections across state lines can directly support the adoption of smart and effective conservation and land use policy across our region.

*Liz Thompson with a conference attendee at the Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities table.* Photo courtesy of Highstead.

Editors' Note: Learn about the other gatherings that connected and inspired us in the fall of 2024.