Program Overview

The Sustainable Landscapes research cluster is engaged in a number of coordination efforts focused on monarch butterfly and pollinator conservation across the United States and Canada, including:

• Facilitating the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group to engage energy companies and transportation agencies in habitat conservation
• Serving as state coordinator for the Illinois Monarch Project, which brings together individuals and organizations across the state to collaborate on monarch conservation
• Administering a national, multi-sector collaborative effort to develop and implement a Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances (CCAA) for the monarch butterfly on energy and transportation lands
• Tracking existing and potential pollinator habitat managed by rights-of-way (ROW) organizations within the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Geospatial Database
• Developing the Pollinator Scorecard to establish a consistent evaluation method for monitoring pollinator habitat and sharing data across ROW industries
• Studying the potential for cross-sector collaboration on pollinator habitat on ROW in the Chicago region