EIN: 27-1226829
501c3 nonprofit corporation
Bozeman, Montana
We conserve nature by connecting people across cultures and geographies.
What is the Center for Large Landscape Conservation?
We strategically connect ideas, individuals, and institutions to catalyze collaboration and
amplify progress towards the imperative of our time: to conserve Earth’s resilient, vital
large landscapes.
Since large landscape conservation involves great geographical scales and touches many
lives, it requires a collaborative effort—not something one organization can fully shoulder
alone. We see ourselves as the “hub” for large landscape conservation, connecting people,
organizations and resources to foster powerful solutions that respect diverse shareholders.
Our Mission
We catalyze, advance, and support large landscape conservation by:
 building communities of invested stakeholders around large landscape issues,
 advancing science that informs critical decision-making, and
 advocating policies and strategies that champion ecological connectivity.
Our Vision
Our vision is a dynamic collaboration of ideas, institutions, and individuals that creates a
network of connected natural areas resilient to large scale environmental challenges.
What is Large Landscape Conservation?
Working in partnership with local people and communities, large landscape conservation
connects working lands, urban areas, and wild lands into whole, healthy landscapes that
allow nature to flourish.
On the ground, large landscape conservation enhances the conservation value of working
lands, helping conserve key connections between landscapes, launching climate adaptation
initiatives, and other strategies to help nature remain resilient on a grand scale.
Our Work
We promote natural resiliency by answering to large landscape conservation’s biggest
challenges: the need for deeper collaboration, supportive science and strong policy.
Build Communities That Engage Invested Stakeholders
The diverse challenges of conserving large landscapes merit an equally diverse response—
a collaboration between organizations, communities, individuals and government. We see
ourselves as the connective tissue of conservation, sparking dynamic conversations
between stakeholders—a catalyst for widespread, positive progress across large
landscapes.
People are integral to large landscapes—we believe the best solutions arise when those
with different perspectives meet to find common ground and insight. To that end, we
organize gatherings, facilitate conversations, and provide communications and educational
resources to deepen understanding and cooperation between those who live, work and
play on the landscape. We know challenges can unite people, so we help communities
identify—and work to solve—shared initiatives.
No one organization can single-handedly address the large landscape challenges of climate
and land use change, but by building communities of invested stakeholders around large
landscape issues, we set the stage for collaboration—and solutions—on a grand scale.
Advance Science That Informs Conservation Decisions
We see science as a powerful diagnostic tool, one that can help us better discover and
defend vital links between landscapes. Our work explores key landscape stressors,
identifying places where maintaining connected landscapes is paramount—now and for
the future. Equipped with a scientific perspective, we collaborate with partner
organizations and practitioners to uphold these crucial connections.
We’re ever-vigilant for opportunities to merge science with large landscape goals, and we
strive to make our scientific findings accessible, useful and relevant. We seek partner
organizations who can benefit from our data and discoveries, supplying them with
resources that amplify their on-the-ground efforts. We also look for gaps in knowledge,
distilling our findings into useful tools to effectively inform decision-makers.
Perhaps most importantly, we look for shared values among stakeholders, directing our
scientific inquiry towards solving common problems. Allied with partners from both inside
and outside the conservation world, we advance connectivity goals together, supported by
a scientific grounding.
Advocate Policy That Champions Ecological Connectivity
We lay the groundwork for a future of large connected natural areas—intact landscapes
that support wildlife while offering all the benefits of nature to those who live, work, and
play nearby. We advocate for policies, plans and strategies that champion large landscape
conservation via federal, state and local initiatives.
Our goal is simple—to lend our policy expertise where it can best advance ecological
connectivity. To that end, we create effective policies, strengthen existing ones, and refine
those yet to be adopted. We encourage agencies and organizations to create wildlifesensitive solutions within their priorities for management and practice, advising them in
the process. As policy evolves, we help decision-makers and managers incorporate new
requirements into their programs and on-the-ground work.
Transforming policy requires open collaboration—especially working on such a large scale.
We unite diverse conservation organizations, leading a collective approach to advancing
policy. Partnering with organizations, agencies, and visionary leaders, we’re ensuring
healthy, intact landscapes for the future of both wildlife and people.
Case Studies
We look for opportunities to support and advance on the ground conservation challenges,
gaining forward momentum with the help of our partners.
Build Communities
Engaging Major Stakeholders Across 18 Million Acres
We are proud to have coordinated one of the first large-scale climate adaptation efforts in
North America, the Adaptive Management Initiative (AMI) of the Roundtable on the Crown
of the Continent. The AMI funded 45 climate adaptation projects throughout the Crown’s
22 million acres, allocating a total of $800,000. This suite of projects, selected by the Crown
Roundtable review committee, was designed to engage a variety of stakeholders across the
landscape and create collaboration among, tribes, First Nations, rural communities, nonprofits, agencies, and faith leaders, all in an effort to build a more resilient, connected
landscapes for both wildlife and people.
We facilitate wide-reaching networks by creating venues that invite deeper participation
and increase our collective impact. We organize an annual conference, host workshops and
webinars, and keep stakeholders updated with a monthly newsletter and conference calls.
With our support, stakeholders share ideas and learn from each other to implement
forward-thinking climate adaptation strategies. AMI participants are continuing to
collaborate on initiatives strategically chosen for their potential to build resilience into the
Crown’s natural and human communities.
While we consider participatory conservation on such a large scale a worthy achievement
unto itself, we’re striving to make the AMI a model for finding solutions that can transfer to
other landscapes—replicating successes around the Crown, the nation, and even the world.
To that end, we are working on similar initiatives regionally with the Great Northern
Landscape Conservation Cooperative. We’re also working through the Practioners Network
to share ideas at a national scale.
Advance Science
Preserving Corridors While Protecting Drivers
Partnering with state agencies, we’ve integrated diverse data in novel ways, developing a
clear picture of crucial zones in the Northern Rockies for both wildlife connectivity and
human safety. By distilling wildlife corridor analyses, highway roadkill data, and road
ecology principles, we’ve discovered where wildlife movement matters most, where human
and wildlife safety are most at risk, and most importantly, where these two considerations
overlap. Now, for the first time ever, practitioners on the ground will be able to rely on
rigorous, science-based guidance as they advance strategies to safeguard wildlife
movement across roadways.
Since wildlife crossing structures have been proven to reduce and even eliminate wildlifevehicle collisions, our findings will inform progress that promotes connectivity for wildlife
and protects drivers, too—helping conservation practitioners find important common
ground with state transportation departments. We’ll translate our completed analysis into
pragmatic resources, getting our findings into practitioners’ hands through action-oriented
reports, workshops, and web-based decision-support tools.
Roads disrupt landscapes, and their impacts will only worsen as the West welcomes more
people. By supporting practitioners’ on-the-ground actions with our big-picture
perspective of connectivity, we can empower stakeholders to address existing roadway
issues as well as inspire future transportation infrastructure that provides safe passage for
wildlife and people. While our current efforts focus on the Northern Rockies, our approach
can be applied across the entire West.
Already, we’re excited by the opportunities we see in our completed scientific work, and
we’re dedicated to translating our findings into vital tools for groups on the ground,
ushering in a future of connected landscapes and safer roadways in the Northern Rockies—
and beyond.
Advocate Policy
Ensuring Connectivity for 193 Million Acres
Advocating for wildlife-friendly policy with our conservation partners, we secured a
landmark advancement for large landscape conservation—by persuading the United States
Forest Service (USFS) to incorporate wildlife corridors and ecological connectivity into its
newly minted Forest Planning Rule. Now, as the USFS creates the next generation of land
management plans for its 193 million acres, the agency must evaluate and provide
protection standards for ecological connectivity and wildlife corridors to ensure the longterm integrity of our public lands.
We consider this a major victory for maintaining large connected natural areas across each
of the 171 national forests and grasslands, as well as having the USFS consider its
connections to neighboring wild areas. Still, it’s just the beginning, as this new national
policy must now be translated into tangible local progress during the development of
individual management plans. To that end, we have proposed changes to the USFS Manual
and USFS Handbook, "how to" books that guide managers through day-to-day operations
and planning. At the same time, we also are participating in local USFS management plan
revisions to assist firsthand in the new policy’s implementation.
We’re thrilled to have helped get provisions for connectivity into the new Forest Planning
Rule, and we’re committed to assuring the Forest Service converts this new direction into
the protection of dozens, if not hundreds, of wildlife corridors across the nation over the
next decade.
Staff Biographies
Dr. Gary Tabor, Executive Director
BSc Ecology, Cornell University
VMD Wildlife Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
MSc Conservation Biology, Yale University
Gary catalyzes progress in building a community that advances large landscape
conservation. Gary is Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Large Landscape
Conservation. Drawing on over 30 years' experience working on behalf of large scale
conservation internationally in Africa, South America, Australia and Canada as well as 12
years as a leader within the U.S. environmental philanthropic community, Gary guides CLLC
with a vision grounded in both science and practice.
A conservation scientist and wildlife veterinarian, Gary’s conservation achievements cross
the globe, including the establishment of Kibale National Park in Uganda and pioneering
the field of Conservation Medicine and Eco-Health. In the West, he co-designed the Western
Governors’ Association Wildlife Corridors Initiative, and co-founded the Yellowstone to
Yukon Conservation Initiative, the Roundtable of the Crown of the Continent, and the
Practitioners’ Network for Large Landscape Conservation.
Gary has served as Program Officer of the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation,
Associate Director of the Henry P. Kendall Foundation, and Yellowstone to Yukon Program
Director for the Wilburforce Foundation. Sitting on multiple conservation boards, Gary is a
Henry Luce Scholar and a 2013-2014 recipient of an Australian American Fulbright Scholar
award in Climate Change and Clean Energy. As part of his Fulbright, Gary was appointed as
Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Centre of Excellence in
Environmental Decisions. He serves as one of four NGO leads on the joint US Canada
Mexico Landscape Conservation Cooperation Council. Gary is incoming Vice Chair of the
World Commission on Protected Areas' Connectivity Conservation Working Group.
Rob Ament, Senior Conservationist
BSc Horticulture, Iowa State University
MSc Biological Sciences, Montana State University
Rob leads our efforts in advancing wildlife corridors and ecological connectivity, drawing
on over 30 years of experience in ecology, natural resource management, and
environmental advocacy, He seeks to develop wildlife-friendly national, regional and statebased policies and test their effectiveness at the landscape level.
He is a founding board member of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative,
former board member of the Wildlands Network and served on two policy groups for the
Western Governors’ Association’s Wildlife Corridors Initiative. He is an active member of
IUCN’s International Connectivity Conservation Network where he is co-authoring a policy
paper on connectivity conservation areas.
Complementing his work here at CLLC, Rob is also the Road Ecology Program Manager for
the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University. He currently serves on
the steering committee for the biennial International Conference on Ecology and was
elected to MSU’s Campus Sustainability Advisory Council. As a road ecologist, he served as
an expert panelist for a National Academies’ Transportation Research Board (TRB)
synthesis on environmental monitoring and is on a standing TRB committee engaged in
roadside management. He was an invited judge for the Federal Highway Administration’s
2013 national Environmental Excellence Awards.
To balance his professional endeavors he has served as a volunteer for such causes as
wildlife rescue, child advocacy, women’s shelters and immigrant education. Like every
good Montanan, he likes to get outdoors whenever it is sunny, cloudy, snowing or raining.
Melly Reuling, Senior Conservationist
BS Biology, Evergreen State College
MS Wildlife Ecology, University of Washington
Melly brings her Montana ranching roots and over two decades of conservation work with
both government and non-government agencies in East Africa to her role at the Center for
Large Landscape Conservation: building and strengthening collaborative communities
around large landscape conservation issues.
Currently, Melly coordinates development of the GNLCC Connectivity Strategy, a regional
multi-scale project to coordinate connectivity actions across the landscape. She is also
helping build tribal Climate Adaptation Planning programs for the Blackfeet and CSKT
through the Roundtable on the Crown of the Continent. She serves on the Leadership Team
of the Rocky Mountain Partner Forum of the GNLCC and helps coordinate stakeholders
working to build drought resilience in the Upper Missouri Basin.
In the past, she’s worked on a wide variety of conservation projects concerned with
wildlife movement, transboundary conservation issues and human wildlife conflict. She
also helped develop community conservation protocol in both Kenya and Tanzania—
experience that has informed her more recent work on connectivity, climate change, and
drought resilience projects in Montana.
Meredith McClure, Conservation Scientist
PhD in Ecology with Graduate Certificate in Statistics, Montana State University
MA in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UCLA
BS in Ecology, Evolution, & Behavior, University of Texas
Meredith helps our partner organizations and agencies focus their limited resources on
conserving the region’s most crucial corridors, bringing a scientific perspective to our
conservation work. Her scientific inquiry also helps to inform CLLC’s conservation policy
and strategy work.
Currently, Meredith works jointly with CLLC and our partner organization, Conservation
Science Partners. Her past and ongoing work has explored connectivity-related processes
in diverse settings, including the nationwide spread of feral swine, puma movements in the
Greater Grand Canyon, the transmission of Hendra virus among Australian flying foxes, and
the impact of roads, land use, and climate change on Northern Rockies wildlife corridors.
Meredith completed her graduate research in landscape ecology in 2012, testing models
commonly used to predict corridors against actual wildlife movement data. She has
volunteered with Population Connection since 2007, helping educators incorporate
population growth and resource consumption issues into their curricula to instill a global
perspective on human impacts on the natural world and inspire action toward positive
change.
Renee Callahan, Senior Policy Officer
BA Economics and East Asian Studies, Harvard University
JD American University
M Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara
With a background in environmental science, management, and law, Renee lends her legal
expertise in administrative processes, legislative language and judicial rulings to CLLC’s
policy work, with the goal of promoting public policies that facilitate ecological connectivity
and large landscape conservation.
While at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California,
Santa Barbara, Renee specialized in conservation planning and coastal marine resources
management, with a focus on habitat connectivity and climate change. She has over a
decade of professional legal experience working on federal regulatory law and public policy
issues in Washington, D.C.
Prior to enrolling at Bren, Renee was a Partner with the law firm of Lawler, Metzger,
Milkman & Keeney, LLC, and served as an Attorney Advisor for the Honorable Joseph E.
McGuire within the Attorney General’s Honors Program at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Rosemary Burton, Office, Grants & Financial Manger
B Arch, Texas A&M University
Arts Year, Gonzaga-in-Florence
M Architecture, Montana State University
Originally trained as an architect, Rosemary now translates her organizational skills and
attention to detail into directing the operations for the Center for Large Landscape
Conservation. An outdoor educator and avid outdoorswoman, Rosemary brings a love of
natural places to her role of keeping the office running smoothly.
Rosemary’s outdoor experience includes guiding trips for Outward Bound, creating
Montana State University's Outdoor Orientation program and several month long river
expeditions. As a designer she had her own business designing and overseeing
construction of small residential and commercial projects. She combined her outdoor
savvy and design skills as a visual merchandiser for Patagonia.
Rosemary speaks Spanish, is an avid traveler and spends much time outdoors hiking, skiing
and canoeing with her two daughters and husband. An engaged local citizen, Rosemary
volunteers frequently for school and community events.