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Regional Conservation Opportunity Areas

How do we ensure that species already on the brink, like the New England cottontail, saltmarsh sparrow, wood turtle, and Karner blue butterfly, will be able to find places to persist in the Northeast in the face of land-use and climate change? How do we keep more common species common in the context of these changes?

Collage of RSGCN

What started as the Regional Conservation Opportunity Areas (RCOAs) project has transformed into Nature's Network, a collaborative effort among 13 states to identify a network of resilient lands and waters that, if protected, can support the needs of wildlife and people across the Northeast. Nature's Network offers scientific consensus on the highest conservation priorities in the region, and creates new opportunities for partners to work together.  

More than a map, Nature's Network is a suite of decision-support tools and regionally consistent datasets that offer voluntary guidance for partners working at different scales in the Northeast region to identify the best opportunities to protect land and restore habitat, and to justify those actions to stakeholders and funders. 

Explore the Nature's Network website

Learn about the RCOA process

Meet the RCOA team

Workspace for RCOA team members

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