Vision: The Swan Valley in 50 years
The Swan Valley is rural and wild. It is a rich environment where people and a natural diversity of native plants and animals thrive. People learn and work together to ensure that the ecosystem's resources are protected, responsibly used and available for all future generations.
Mission
We, citizens of the Swan Valley, Montana, have a self-imposed sense of responsibility to maintain a strong, vital community involved in setting its own destiny through partnerships that encourage sustainable use and care of public and private lands. We encourage dynamic relationships among federal, state, county, industrial, small private landowners/managers and citizens of the land.
Goals
A. Create and sustain a learning center that promotes understanding of the land and relationships between people and the land in the Swan Valley.
B. Create partnerships among organizations, agencies and the community that sustain the community and the land.
C. Integrate the best science with the knowledge and sense of local people experienced with the land to better manage and monitor the land.
D. Recognize interrelationships of economic and social considerations in ecosystem issues and processes, and emphasize the necessity of addressing these inherent relationships at all levels.
E. Serve as a model to demonstrate to other communities that Swan Ecosystem Center concepts can lead to integrated land management actions that benefit people and the land.
F. Maintain a U.S. Forest Service presence at the Condon Work Center with responsibility to deal with issues of local concern.
G. Provide opportunities for local people to receive tangible benefits from good land management and Swan Ecosystem Center operations.
Objectives
1. Establish an outreach program to help people of all ages learn about ecosystem processes, sustainable land management, and wildfire protection. Involve local schools and the community in educational activities. Provide educational facilities and programs for kindergarten through adulthood. Develop K-12 programs, including an outdoor education curriculum useful to, and developed partially by, local school teachers. Invite leaders from outside communities to workshops that deal with ecosystem management. Offer workshops to help private landowners develop and implement stewardship plans and avoid conflicts with wildlife.Offer classes for adults using local experts and agency personnel as teachers.
2. Cultivate broad community support through interaction with established community groups, including the Swan Valley Community Council. Inform the public about Swan Ecosystem Center activities through exhibits, newspaper articles, speaking engagements, Web sites and other methods. Personally invite local, knowledgeable people to participate in SEC planning and activities. Try to draw on the expertise of people who are unlikely to attend by contacting them on an individual basis. Assemble a list of local, knowledgeable people who could participate. Invite and urge Montana Legacy Project stakeholders to participate in research and ecosystem planning in the Swan Valley.
3. Develop programs that cultivate participatory research. Involve the community in identifying, designing and conducting appropriate research studies. Encourage individuals and community groups to request useful research projects and suggest names of local experts able to assist trained researchers. Involve residents in scientific data collection and monitoring. Make the findings available in lay person's terms; interpret pertinent research in readable summaries. Index and store research summaries at SEC. Create a bibliography and develop ways to disseminate Swan Valley research to the community. Integrate all pertinent research into SEC planning.
4. Plan and manage forest stewardship projects. Create stewardship tasks to maintain a high level of interest in the community. Use stewardship projects as demonstration sites, including the Elk Creek Conservation Area, for on-the-ground learning. Assist the Forest Service and DNRC in offering field tours and informational meetings about public lands timber sales and other projects, and encourage the agencies to accept good suggestions from the public during the early stages of planning. Develop restoration projects in cooperation with land management agencies that offer employment for locals, including road restoration, stream enhancement and campsite restoration. Provide demonstration sites to illustrate biodiversity. Support development of watchable wildlife sites; encourage the creation of guide services.
5. Develop a public relations strategy for SEC's basic support.
Although Swan Ecosystem Center's primary area of concern is the Swan Valley as defined in Goal A, SEC cooperates with neighboring communities on projects of mutual concern. |
