Draft Business Model…Page 1 of 10

Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture

Business Model (Draft)

June 2004

INTRODUCTION…

The Changing Face of Bird Conservation – the Role of Joint Ventures: As regional bird conservation partnerships, Joint Ventures can trace their genesis to the 1986 North American Waterfowl Management Plan. A conservation plan continental in scope was largely unheard of at the time, and the NAWMP called for biological, institutional, and strategic changes in the business of waterfowl conservation that were as fundamental as they were unprecedented – changes that have since been reiterated, refined, and reinforced by an increasingly complex private, state, federal bird conservation community. Today, it is axiomatic that the bird conservation enterprise will be driven by national and international plans that define conservation objectives from a continental and even hemispheric perspective; that science-based planning will, through explicitly stated, testable assumptions, link on-the-ground habitat management to large-scale population goals; and that our collective habitat management efforts are to be so focused as to elicit population responses at regional and continental scales. Today, Joint Ventures are being looked to as not simply a forum for leveraging resources but as a vehicle for delivering increasingly complex and comprehensive approaches to the business of bird conservation.

The Business Model Concept and Its Applicability to Joint Ventures: The concept of a business model is not traditional to the “business” of bird conservation or natural resource management in general. Indeed, it is a concept that only recently has found footing within the business world, as traditional “brick and mortar” enterprises have sought to adjust to the challenges of e-commerce, and “.com” entrepreneurs have sought to harness the potential of the internet economy.

Within the field of commerce, a business model is intended to speak to needs that go beyond those addressed by the more traditional “business plan”, “strategic plan”, or “annual operating plan.” The business model is emerging as the vehicle for defining the underlying, otherwise unstated, assumptions and core beliefs that when articulated explain to audiences both internal and external why a business exists; the value-added services and products it seeks to provide; how it seeks to position itself in the external marketplace; and the operational principles and framework upon which its human and capital resources are arrayed and allocated. If effective, a business model will respond to one of the principle tenets espoused by management theorists, that being that many businesses fail or decline because the assumptions that underlie their decisions (about society, markets, customers, products, technology, and mission) are made obsolete and invalid by a constantly changing business environment.

The partners of the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture are of the view that fundamental changes are likewise underway in the “business environment” of natural resource management and especially so in the field of bird conservation. More specifically, we are of the belief:

  • That the conservation paradigm as a whole is shifting – from a value-based, opportunistic pursuit of site-specific conservation benefits toward the science-based pursuit of predicted landscape sustainability.
  • That the emerging paradigm will increasingly require the integration of science and information management technologies into the full spectrum of the bird conservation enterprise – planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and research.
  • And that the vision of integrated bird conservation presupposes that on a partnership basis planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and research will be coordinated and facilitated as an iterative whole.

It is within this changing conservation environment that the partners of the LMV Joint Venture turn to the concept of a business model in an effort to articulate and refine the core beliefs and assumptions that have underpinned our collective success to date and that can guide our diverse but like-minded members in refining and maintaining a partnership infrastructure that will continue to serve the implementation of national and international bird conservation plans within the LMV region. We invite comments and insights aimed at applying and refining the business-model concept to the vision of integrated bird conservation.

PURPOSE AND MISSION…

Purpose: The Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) Joint Venture is a self-directed, non-regulatory private, state, federal conservation partnership that exists for the purpose of implementing the goals and objectives of national and international bird conservation plans within the Lower Mississippi Valley region.

This purpose acknowledges a functional, scale-sensitive relationship between the LMV Joint Venture and national/international bird conservation plans. It recognizes that the broad goals and objectives of continental plans provide the focus and direction for Joint Venture actions, but that continental plans themselves find their fruition only within the region-specific actions of Joint Venture partners. Accordingly, the LMV Joint Venture partnership will operate not only with the purpose of implementing national/international plans but also with the aim of supporting their progressive refinement. Success will require that Joint Venture partners approach biological planning, population and habitat monitoring, and evaluation and research in a manner that is instructive to conservation at the continental as well as regional scale.

In being non-regulatory, the LMV Joint Venture does not address harvest regulation or take positions on matters pertaining to environmental impact assessment of development projects. Such positions are left to the purview of individual partners through established regulatory processes.

Mission Statement: The LMV Joint Venture will function as the forum in which the private, state, federal conservation community develops a shared vision of bird conservation for the LMV region; cooperates in its implementation; and collaborates in its refinement.

As such, the LMV Joint Venture will function not simply as a forum for discussion but as a vehicle for coordinated planning, implementation, and evaluation. While the vision of integrated bird conservation is subservient to the mission and authorities of individual organizations, Joint Venture partners operate on the premise that their otherwise independent actions are to be pursued in the context of a collective mission, and that each bears a responsibility to the implementation of national and international conservation plans that can be achieved only to the extent it is shared.

PARTNERSHIP SCOPE…

Operational Scope: The operational scope of the LMV Joint Venture emanates from the operational goal established for integrated bird conservation partnerships by the U.S. Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, that being “to deliver the full spectrum of bird conservation through regionally based, biologically driven, landscape-oriented partnerships”; and from Director’s Order No. 146 of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Joint Venture Administration.” In both scope and vision, these documents presume that regional Joint Venture partnerships will seek to integrate as an iterative whole the full range of activities that encompass the bird conservation enterprise. Thus the operational scope of the LMV Joint Venture will encompass bird conservation planning and implementation, population and habitat monitoring, and evaluation and research.

Biological/Taxonomic Scope: The LMV Joint Venture’s conservation efforts and energies will be directed at the protection, restoration, and management of those species of North American avifauna and their habitats (endemic to the LMV Region) encompassed by the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP); North American Land Bird Conservation Plan; United States Shorebird Conservation Plan (USSCP); North American Waterbird Conservation Plan (NAWCP); and Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI). These national/international plans are together recognized as encompassing the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI).

Geographic Scope: Figure 1 depicts the administrative boundary of the LMV Joint Venture and its relationship to Bird Conservation Regions (BCR) established by NABCI. Joint Venture planning, implementation, and evaluation will be BCR-specific; and thus the primary geographic focus of the LMV Joint Venture will be the two BCR’s lying entirely or mostly within the LMVJV administrative boundary – the Mississippi Alluvial Valley and West Gulf Coastal Plain. However, Joint Venture planning, implementation, and evaluation extend in varying degrees to the limits of the Joint Venture’s administrative boundary. The Management Board will give consideration to realigning administrative boundaries to more closely conform to BCR boundaries at such time as BCR-specific partnerships emerge in those Bird Conservation Regions lying only partially or tangentially within the LMVJV administrative boundary.

FUNCTIONS AND SERVICES…

The NABCI goal of “regionally based, biologically driven, landscape-oriented” conservation requires that as a partnership the Joint Venture serve functions and provide services that extend across state boundaries and that often transcend the jurisdictional reach and capability of any individual partner. Accordingly, member agencies and organizations will seek to provide through their collective actions value-added services in the following areas.

  • Support to national/international bird conservation initiatives in stepping down continental or range-wide goals and objectives of national and international plans to ecoregional-specific population targets, habitat objectives, and conservation strategies.
  • Iterative science-based planning and landscape-level prioritization that focuses conservation programs on the most environmentally sensitive portions of the landscape.
  • Development of a partnership infrastructure that allows the full spectrum of the bird conservation enterprise (planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and research) to function as an iterative whole.
  • Coordinated application of geospatial and other information management technologies to support conservation at ecoregional scales.
  • Coordinated and leveraged delivery of private, state, federal conservation programs targeted at priority habitats.

OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK…

Figure 2 depicts the broad framework through which the LMV Joint Venture operates in providing these functions and services. The operational premise behind the framework is that a partnership infrastructure will be developed that distinguishes between three distinct but interrelated “spheres” of activity and is supported by a network of geospatial and information management capability. This framework is intended to address two broad challenges confronting the bird conservation community. The first is creating (and sustaining) a partnership infrastructure that links habitat management with conservation planning and both to monitoring, evaluation, and research. The second challenge is one of aligning and deploying existing resources to confront the demand for more scientific rigor in developing goals, objectives, and priorities and more intensive application of geospatial, remote sensing, and information management technologies.

The assumption here stated is that the long term success of the Joint Venture concept hinges not simply on how partners allocate new resources but on how existing people, processes, and programs respond to a conservation paradigm that places an increasing premium on the often technology-demanding methodologies of science-based conservation. Each sphere of activity defined below requires the focused application of a set of core competencies and skills that are currently dispersed throughout the program-oriented workforce of individual partners. The intent of the three-sphered operating framework is to allow existing personnel to operate within teams and working groups that are focused on those value-added functions and services that contribute not simply to “implementing the Joint Venture” but that help each agency and organization respond internally to the increasing demands for science-based, landscape-oriented conservation.

Biological Foundation: It is within this sphere of activity that Joint Venture partners establish a biological basis and scientific rationale for the wide array of management actions deployed across the landscape. The focus is two fold: 1) biological planning that links on-the-ground habitat objectives to predicted population response on the basis of explicitly stated, testable assumptions; and 2) the development of monitoring programs and feedback mechanisms that link management and science in an adaptive learning process. The partnership infrastructure will typically be organized around technical working groups or teams consisting of interagency personnel with specialized knowledge of population/habitat interrelationships and experience in applying the scientific method to resource planning and analysis. In keeping with the business approach to Joint Venture implementation, LMV partners working within the biological foundation sphere will develop and progressively refine the following “products” of a sound biological foundation.

  • Regional population targets that emanate from national and international plans.
  • Biological models of population/habitat relationships that reflect explicitly stated, testable assumptions.
  • Population-based habitat objectives expressed at multiple spatial scales.
  • Research directed at testing the models and assumptions articulated within population sustainability models.
  • Ecoregional-scale population and habitat monitoring programs.

Conservation Design: Within this sphere of activity, Joint Venture partners will direct their energies at increasing their collective capability to:

  • Assess ecosystem change at ecoregional and landscape scales (focusing on those parameters deemed most pertinent to sustaining bird populations at prescribed levels).
  • Identify the most environmentally sensitive portions of the landscape.
  • Articulate a compelling vision of landscape sustainability.
  • Provide landscape-level decision support for conservation delivery.

Recognizing that conservation design and the development of a sound biological foundation are procedurally allied and iterative in nature, Appendix A outlines in more detail the procedural elements of biological planning and conservation design as defined by LMV Joint Venture partners.

Conservation Delivery: The LMV business model focuses on two primary avenues for effecting on-the-ground habitat change. The first involves the coordinated and leveraged application of programs endemic to Joint Venture partners. As a partnership, the Joint Venture is the beneficiary of an extensive and proven conservation delivery infrastructure girded by clear legislative and administrative authorities and procedures. Accordingly, the LMV model does not call for the Joint Venture to operate as a funding program, accumulating and dispensing project funds that might otherwise be spent through the programmatic structure of individual members. Instead, the LMV model reflects a core belief that the habitat programs of its individual partners should be guided by the science-based, landscape-oriented conservation planning that is a key element of the Joint Venture’s value-added functions and services. Secondly, the LMV model recognizes that the greatest opportunities for effecting positive landscape change often lie outside the operational purview of wildlife agency programs, with Farm Bill programs being a notable example. In this context, the Joint Venture partnership will function as a purveyor of science-based goals and objectives and decision support tools that can target a broader range of conservation actions to the most environmentally sensitive portions of the landscape. This model of conservation delivery will require that Joint Venture partners place heavy emphasis on the following actions.

  1. Ensure that the products of biological planning and conservation design, i.e. population-based habitat objectives, spatially explicit decision support models, etc., are translated into the program-specific goals, objectives, and priorities of State Wildlife Grant Program plans, Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plans, annual operating plans of interagency private lands programs, etc.
  1. Pursue opportunities for leveraging individual resources through site-specific project partnerships.
  1. Inform the delivery of conservation programs lying outside the direct operational purview of the bird conservation community, e.g. Farm Bill programs, with science-based priorities and decision support models.
  1. Pursue emerging opportunities within other programs affecting the development of land and water resources, in particular the Department of Energy’s terrestrial carbon sequestration initiative.

Geomatics Network: The LMV business model calls for the three distinct but interrelated spheres of conservation activity described above to be linked and supported by a geomatics network. The word “geomatics” has only recently entered the lexicon of the information technology community. It speaks to the development, storage, retrieval, distribution, and use of spatial data pertinent to conserving the earth’s biotic features. In this sense, geomatics encompasses not only geographic information system (GIS) technology but also remote sensing; the development and management of relational databases; and web-interface technologies. These four – GIS, remote sensing, relational databases, and web-interfaces – can be thought of as the quartet of information technologies upon which science-based, landscape-level approaches to conservation will increasingly depend.

The information technology vision of the LMV business model is two-fold:

  • The otherwise independent GIS labs of partners are connected and coordinating as a “virtual lab” – developing, distributing, and maintaining the spatial data necessary for partner-based conservation at ecoregional scales.
  • Managers, planners, and researchers are sharing communal conservation data accessed and updated through web-based information management technologies.

Accordingly, a Geomatics Network will be presumed to exist at a level commensurate with the progress being made on these two fronts.

Joint Venture partners will pursue the vision of a geomatics network by increasing their internal geomatics capabilities; coordinating their otherwise independent geomatics efforts in the same sense as conservation delivery is coordinated; and by enhancing the geomatics capabilities of the Joint Venture Support Office. The intent on the latter point is that the Joint Venture Office support and augment at the BCR scale the often state-specific efforts of individual partners and that the Joint Venture Office develop and maintain a web-based capability to serve ecoregional scale geospatial data.