Big picture tools

For regional efforts
Linking work across legal boundaries to create interconnected, diverse natural areas.

While decisions affecting natural resources may be made at the local level, natural resources themselves know no boundaries. Just as the way you manage your backyard affects the ecological welfare of the community you live in, decisions made by one community affect others nearby. Natural areas are less likely to sustain healthy natural systems if they're not part of a larger habitat network. Rivers and lakes represent the sum of everything that happens on the lands within their watersheds.

To better understand how individual pieces of the ecological puzzle fit together, the DNR and others have been working to develop regional and landscape level approaches to natural resource management. This big picture view can better help guide policies and investments at both the regional and community levels.