The Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership

The Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership:

Celebrating Ten Years of Collaboration, Innovation, and Conservation

Conserving the largest natural landscape on the East Coast, the Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership protects the Trail’s biodiversity, safeguards scenic views, and fosters climate resiliency

BY HEATHER B. HABELKA

“When you’re standing on a high point on the Appalachian Trail, you want that sense of wilderness and wonder. But you’re looking out at largely private land. At any time, that view can change and remarkably shift the experience that is the Trail,” says Katie Allen, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s Director of Landscape Conservation and Managing Coordinator of the Appalachian Trail Landscape Partnership (ATLP). “This incentivizes us to protect the A.T. experience beyond the Trail.”

The ATLP was formed in 2015 by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the National Park Service to connect the wild, scenic, and cultural wonders of the A.T. and its surrounding landscape. Now in its tenth year, the Partnership has become a nationally recognized, celebrated, and replicated conservation model — remaining unified in its partner-driven mission to acquire and steward 20,000 acres of critical landscape annually.

Over the last decade, the ATLP has been shielding critical landscape from the industrial world, encroaching development, and a changing climate. Right: The view from Shenandoah National Park. Photo by Brian Wing

A child in a bright pink jacket and tan hiking pants stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking a vast, green valley filled with rolling hills and farmland under a blue sky with scattered clouds.

“This is about the lands, the views, and the communities along the A.T. and how we can further the mission to protect the A.T. experience. We’re here to ensure people of today have access, and that future generations get to have the same experience—regardless of what happens to the world outside of the corridor.”

~Ed W. Clark, Superintendent, Appalachian National Scenic Trail – National Park Service

“The ATLP views the Eastern Seaboard as one landscape and represents a partnership focused solely on conservation. Before the ATLP, no one was looking beyond the Trail to the landscape,” explains Dan Ryan, the ATC’s Vice President of Conservation and Government Relations. “Think of it this way: The ATC’s priority is the Trail. NPS’s priority is the Trail corridor. The ATLP’s priority is the landscape.” Allen adds that the Appalachian Mountains, the A.T. Landscape, and the Trail are all nestled within the Eastern Seaboard, and they’re all connected. In addition to conserving the landscape, the ATLP also focuses on recreation access.

“This is about the lands, the views, and the communities along the A.T. and how we can further the mission to protect the A.T. experience,” says Ed W. Clark, Superintendent, Appalachian National Scenic Trail – U.S. National Park Service (NPS). “The ATLP is here to ensure people of today have access, and that future generations get to have the same experience — regardless of what happens to the world outside of the corridor.”

The ATLP is convened and funded primarily by the ATC and the NPS, with support from private and public donors. It is led by a twenty-member steering committee and driven by a membership base of over one hundred aligned organizations including ATC-affiliated Trail maintaining clubs, government agencies, conservation networks, land trusts, and nonprofit conservation organizations. According to Allen, “Our members come together with a shared goal to accelerate the pace and scale of conservation along the A.T. landscape.”

“In a word it’s collaboration,” shares Clark. “The ATLP has brought in partners we otherwise wouldn’t be able to engage with whether they’re land conservancies, local governments, or state agencies. It’s brought a cross-section of people together who have similarly aligned mission goals.”

Building Critical Corridors

The ATLP is designed to represent the fourteen-state Trail landscape and to safeguard biodiversity, foster climate resiliency, respond to encroaching development, and ensure public access to nature and outdoor recreation. This critical landscape also provides habitats and migratory routes for native wildlife as species respond to environmental changes and rising temperatures.

Eliza Townsend, Maine Conservation Policy Director of the Appalachian Mountain Club, emphasizes how valuable the Trail is to preserving biodiversity and providing climate refuge for plants and animals. “North America has lost over three billion birds since 1970,” Townsend says. “This landscape is critical to supporting their migration. The forest is free from light pollution and birds are able to rest and find food. If you enjoy watching birds in your backyard, land conservation applies to you.”

For Jeff Hunter, Southern Appalachian Director of the National Parks Conservation Association, his research on wildlife crossings in North Carolina and Tennessee is in perfect alignment with the ATLP. “Landscape acquisition and connectivity mitigates impacts to wildlife and protects the black bear, elk, white tail deer, red and gray fox, and bobcat populations,” he explains.

A white-tailed deer stands in a grassy meadow near a rocky ledge with a backdrop of layered blue-green mountain ridges under a pale blue sky.

The Trail landscape provides strongholds for native plants and animals to move and adapt as the environment changes around them. Above: A deer along the A.T., Roan Mountain, Tennessee. Photo courtesy of Cynthia Viola / cynthiaviola.com; Below: The American painted lady butterfly. Photo by Bryan Tompkins, U.S. Fish and Wildlife; Pink lady’s slipper orchids. Photo by BlueRidgeKitties/flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

A split image showing a close-up of a butterfly with patterned brown and orange wings perched on a white flower on the left, and a cluster of pink lady’s slipper orchids with dewdrops in a forested area on the right.

According to Marian Orlousky, the ATC’s Director of Science and Stewardship, the benefits of protecting these wild lands extend beyond the immediate Trail. “We all rely on large blocks of healthy forest for clean air and clean water, for flood and erosion control, for mitigation of natural disasters, and to support our livelihoods and well-being,” she says.

Creating Action in a Committee Setting

While conservation is key to the success of the ATLP, the people who comprise the Partnership are just as important. “The relationships formed within the ATLP are one of the strongest, most important products of this effort,” Townsend says.

Pete McKinley, Ph.D., Senior Conservation Biologist with The Wilderness Society, agrees, “There’s a solidarity and a warmth in meeting, connecting, and building consensus with people doing the same work in different states.”

Allen emphasizes that the ATLP’s strength, success, and longevity is due to the dedication of its partners, “The ATLP’s leadership is focused on maintaining, supporting, and expanding the ATLP’s membership. To achieve this, we facilitate a number of in-person and virtual touchpoints with our partners throughout the year.”

“The first one hundred years were spent on securing the Trail. The next one hundred will be spent on meaningful conservation.”

~Pete McKinley, Ph.D., Senior Conservation Biologist with The Wilderness Society

A group of people in outdoor clothing stands in front of a white brick building with green shutters, posing for a group photo on a brick walkway.

Above: Attendees of the ATLP Annual Meeting join Appalachian National Scenic Trail Superintendent, Ed W. Clark, in the historically significant Dunker Church during a field trip to Antietam National Battlefield. Clark discussed his landscape management experience specific to battlefields and intersections with large-landscape conservation and National Heritage Areas. Photo courtesy of the ATC; Below: A park ranger at Antietam National Battlefield speaks during the ATLP’s Annual Meeting about upcoming preservation, restoration, and conservation projects. A view of the battlefield and the ridgetop where the A.T. runs can be seen in the distance. Photo courtesy of the ATC

A park ranger stands in front of a large panoramic window, gesturing as he gives a presentation to a group of seated visitors who are looking out at a scenic landscape with farmland and distant hills.

One of the ATLP’s most notable — and eagerly anticipated — events is the Annual Partner Meeting. A main focus of this year’s Annual Partner Meeting is the ATLP’s Strategic Plan. Updated every three years, the Plan outlines the key actions and core functions of the Partnership, ensuring a systematic, science-focused approach to project selection; a balance between community, economic, and ecological value; and the continued delivery of support and resources.

A key component of the 2025 – 2028 Strategic Plan is the development of a digital lookbook. Spearheaded by the ATLP’s Strategic Conservation Committee, the lookbook will serve as a collective portfolio of projects across the landscape that meet required conservation criteria and are ready for funding. It will allow the ATLP to track each project’s progress, serve as a clearinghouse for advocacy and education materials, and support outreach to public funders, government policy and decision-makers, and private foundations. “The lookbook will allow us to analyze, access, and advocate for the ATLP’s priority projects,” explains Allen. “For example, if we’re looking to acquire a water-based parcel, we’ll be able to go to a water-focused funder or to the legislator who represents the district where the project is located.”

The lookbook will also give the ATLP the ability to view the Trail’s fourteen-state corridor as a whole. “By identifying high- and low-capacity gaps, we’ll be able to potentially fill those gaps and use this data to build relationships with new partners and landowners on the ground level,” says Allen. “We’ll be looking at pinch points to conservation needs such as creating a resiliency pathway for climate refuge, supporting biodiversity flow, or protecting scenic views.”

Celebrating National Recognition

Over the past ten years, the ATLP has earned recognition as a best practices model and is being replicated by conservation organizations across the country. Recently, the ATLP was featured as a “Best Practice in Action” in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s manual, Implementing Landscape-Level Approaches to Resource Management.

“It’s an honor, a truly big deal, to be mentioned in the publication that provides guidance on how to do this work successfully,” says Allen. “It underscores how much work our partners are doing, and how well and quickly they are doing it.”

“The challenge is to encourage thinking beyond hiking when making economic and land use development decisions. We open the conversation at a local level around floodplain management, climate resiliency, and natural disasters that directly impact Appalachian communities. These can be addressed using a nature-based approach.”

~Katie Allen, ATC’s Director of Landscape Conservation and Managing Coordinator of the ATLP

A scenic overlook framed by tree branches shows a winding river cutting through a lush green valley with forests, fields, and low hills under a clear blue sky.

The 20,000 additional acres acquired by the ATLP each year will add to its current scenic views. Above: Lehigh Gap in Pennsylvania. Photo by Joana Barraza; Below: Pinwheel Vista in New Jersey. Photo by Kathleen O’Keefe

A view from a rocky hilltop with red and green autumn foliage in the foreground, looking out over a patchwork of fall-colored forest and farmland stretching toward distant hills under a cloudy sky.

Reframing Conservation Challenges

A large part of the ATLP’s sustained success is its ability to adapt to the Trail’s changing landscape, to accelerate its conservation efforts, and to proactively address challenges. One of the most complex challenges of a partnership at this scale is how different Maine is from Georgia, and how different the needs of each region are.

Max Olsen, the ATC’s Landscape Program Assistant, is coordinating the ATLP’s first regional program in the Northeast in response to this challenge. The goals of this pilot program are to examine the efficacy of regional ATLP models and to establish best practices for replication along the entire Trail. “There are a number of local land trusts and conservation nonprofits that are ready to be activated,” he says. “The Trail has an awesome history of being a grassroots entity that leads from the bottom up. It’s a natural fit for the ATC to embrace community-based regional models as a way to get the Trail’s landscape in front of a larger number of local audiences.”

To that end Katie Hess, the ATC’s Director of Pennsylvania Landscape Conservation, shares how the state’s significant investment and demonstrated success has laid the foundation for the ATLP, and has played a major role in the Partnership’s growth. “The process is key, it’s not just about the geography,” she says. “We’ve been doing this work in Pennsylvania since 2006 and are able to scale up methods and provide advice and expertise while respecting partners’ priorities and territories.”

Sustainable funding is also an ongoing challenge for the ATLP. The Wild East Action Fund is a flagship program of the ATC’s landscape conservation work. Initially seeded by a private funder, the Fund exhausted its resources several years ago. However, when funded, it allows grants to be made to the ATLP’s partners to conduct due diligence prior to presenting a parcel to the NPS, U.S. Forest Service, or private funder for acquisition. The Fund covers surveys, appraisals, legal fees, and planning to incentivize focused prioritization of conservation projects from Georgia to Maine. To date, the Wild East Action Fund has granted over $2 million to 90 projects, protecting over 88,000 acres across the A.T. Landscape. “The ATC’s goal is to make this a stable funding source and to open the Fund to another round of grantees,” says Ryan.

“We want to ensure this land is healthy, vibrant,and resilient … In many cases our ATLP partners take on the responsibility of land stewardship …”

~Marian Orlousky, the ATC’s Director of Science and Stewardship

“Our landscape, anchored by the A.T., is so critical to a much bigger landscape and the complexity and diversity that spans the Trail’s fourteen states,” explains Allen. In addition to the threat of over development, overgrowth of trees or invasive species can also affect the historic landscape views. Efforts by the Partnership include working with volunteers, stewards, and local communities to preserve the vistas and maintain the open space. Above: Dupuis Hill, a protected open area in Vermont. Photo by Ilana Copel; Below: Upper Lewis Field in Vermont. Photo by Ilana Copel

A sunlit view of rolling green hills covered in dense forest and open pasture, with scattered buildings and a narrow road visible between the trees beneath a sky with soft, scattered clouds.

Once the parcels are acquired, stewardship presents its own set of funding and maintenance challenges. “We set land aside that will never be developed and will be protected forever,” Orlousky says. “But we want to ensure this land is healthy, vibrant, and resilient for the next one hundred years. In many cases our ATLP partners take on the responsibility of land stewardship, and we’re able to secure funding from private funders and foundations. Volunteer Trail maintaining clubs take on a tremendous amount of responsibility tending to meadows and grasslands and doing invasive species work.”

Focusing on Outreach to Build Trust

ATLP’s outreach and partnership relies heavily on building trust with the local Trail communities. According to Allen, “The challenge is to encourage thinking beyond hiking when making economic and land use development decisions. We open the conversation at a local level around floodplain management, climate resiliency, and natural disasters that directly impact Appalachian communities. These can be addressed using a nature-based approach.”

Brendan Mysliwiec, the ATC’s Director of Federal Policy stresses, “The underlying presumption of the ATLP is that it cannot be a purely governmental effort. It cannot only be the Park Service and the ATC making plans and driving development of this large landscape project. It’s finding how to include people, making sure everyone who is willing to contribute knows how to contribute, and that we are serving the community.”

Another benefit to local Trail communities is the power of the Partnership. “When a local community is going up against a developer or a corporation, we’re on the ground with them. They’re not alone,” Olsen explains.

Simon Rucker, Executive Director of the Maine Appalachian Land Trust, agrees. “By tying a conservation project to the A.T. you’re benefiting from greater visibility and greater funding opportunities,” he says. “It’s a people-powered network where we come together, work together, and learn from each other.”

To find out more about the ATLP and sign up for the newsletter, visit appalachiantrail.org/ATLP
To learn more about how you can support the Wild East Action Fund and the ATLP, contact [email protected]
To connect with an ATLP Coordinator, email [email protected]

Back to Issue