🌎About Robert Campellone, the landscape designer, and author of Designing Nature’s Half
Hello…and welcome to…Issue #002!
Reading Time: 2 mins.
TL;DR: Rob's professional background in partnership building, public outreach, and conservation planning, and passion for landscapes capable of sustaining people, planet, and prosperity for current and future generations has ultimately brought him to author a book, Designing Nature's Half: A Practical Guide for Conserving 50% by 2050.
Born and raised in The City of Brotherly Love. At home, anywhere.
“It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it.”
— Edward Abbey, Park Ranger, Author
Welcome to my corner of the world!
I’m glad you’re here!
In the last issue of Catalyst, I mentioned I'd share a little about myself and my qualifications to write a book about a climate adaptation planning approach. I hope it answers any questions you have. If not, drop me a note at info@robertcampellone.com, and I'll try to answer them. Here we go!
Robert Campellone is an artist, conservation catalyst, camper van voyager, and author of the early 2024 release Designing Nature's Half: A Practical Guide for Conserving 50% by 2050.
Having a career in conservation planning with the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington, DC, Utah, and Alaska, Rob had direct hands-on experience developing partnerships and conducting public outreach to acquire the information needed to develop conservation management plans and related projects. When he became the Chief of Planning for the National Wildlife Refuge System in the Southwest Region, he began to think about and apply those same people-centric skills to planning projects within the context of large geographic areas.
In the spring of 2011, Rob relocated for a second tour of duty in the nation's capital, this time to apply his knowledge of partnerships, public outreach, and conservation planning at the national level. As the National Refuge System's Senior Policy Advisor, he promoted a human-centric, design-thinking approach to address humanity's wicked problems, such as the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. His successful efforts resulted in a Service-wide policy shift towards landscape conservation design and implementing the policy through a nationwide network of 22 public-private partnerships called the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. To guide that policy, Rob led the development of a multi-partner, peer-reviewed article, The iCASS Platform: Nine principles for landscape conservation design, which was published in the professional journal Urban and Landscape Planning.
With the demise of the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives in 2018 and the resulting void of a nationwide, regionally-coordinated, convening body, Rob is once again encouraging a people-centric approach to designing sustainable and resilient landscapes during a time of rapid change. Designing Nature's Half: A Practical Guide for Conserving 50% by 2050 will be published in the spring of 2024.
You can sign up for Rob's newsletter – Catalyst – where he discusses the attributes of landscape conservation design and demonstrates his endless passion for landscapes capable of sustaining people, planet, and prosperity for current and future generations.
Rob received his Master's degree in Natural Resources Management with a concentration in planning from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse University. He lives in The Land of Enchantment with his spouse, Liz. You can follow their #vanlife adventures on Instagram and Facebook as they explore America's iconic landscapes in CAV – the Camp Alone Van.
An Invitation
If you think you have something to offer to the conversation and would like to be a guest on our pod, drop me a note at: info@lcdinstitute.org and put "Guest" in the subject line.
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Thanks for your interest and support!
I'll keep you posted on how my projects are coming along via future issues of Designing Nature's Half: The Blog.
Until next time,
Dr. Amanda Sesser, the Coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Partnership, discusses the need for inclusive design and decision-making processes that involve diverse stakeholders and empower communities. By bringing together various sectors of society, such as transportation, energy, and conservation, sustainable landscapes can be co-designed, created, and managed for people, planet, and prosperity. The episode emphasizes the need to balance human well-being and ecological integrity – a challenge that requires a new governance model that breaks down silos in traditional planning and decision-making. It addresses historic patterns of inequality and injustice to create a more inclusive and equitable society and highlights the concept of reciprocity and the importance of engaging indigenous and other disenfranchised people.