– A COMMON PURPOSE
Diverse goals. Shared commitments.
Coalition members come from different sectors, hold different opinions, and pursue different goals. What unites them is a shared commitment to these eight principles. They aren't imposed from the outside. They're the agreed-upon foundation that makes collaboration across difference possible, and that turns a coalition into something more than a collection of organizations that happen to care about the same things.
Collaboration is the opening move. Regulation is the backstop.
Voluntary collaboration promotes a fundamental balance of mutual gain across all partners, leading to effective conservation on the ground while respecting the needs of landowners and communities. Regulatory approaches are sometimes necessary and appropriate, but voluntary and collaborative tools are the preferred modes for achieving wildlife conservation on working lands. When everyone at the table chooses to be there, the outcomes hold.
Conservation across difference requires trust built over time.
Coalition members work in partnership to achieve shared goals and to build enduring trust among those who have historically worked in silos, or even in conflict with one another. Trust isn't assumed. It's earned through consistent follow-through, honest communication, and a genuine commitment to shared outcomes. It's also the hardest thing to rebuild once lost, which is why CWC treats it as the foundation, not an afterthought.
The more voices at the table, the more durable the outcomes.
CWC represents a broad range of groups united by common conservation interests, a sense of good stewardship, and a collective desire to pass working lands and wildlife on to future generations. The coalition is deeply committed to welcoming the perspectives of all entities and individuals, including underserved and underrepresented interests. Our definition of working lands is intentionally broad, encompassing forests, farms, ranches, infrastructure corridors, military installations, public lands, tribal lands, and urban landscapes. The more diverse the coalition, the more scalable and equitable the solutions.
Grounded in data. Open to new approaches.
CWC's work is rooted in sound, data-driven science, citizen science, and local and traditional knowledge, providing concrete outcomes for wildlife and habitats while meeting the socioeconomic and cultural needs of landowners, managers, and communities. Existing conservation tools should be used more broadly and incentivized more effectively. New tools should be developed where gaps exist. The field of conservation doesn't stand still, and neither do we.
Landowners who see a future in conservation will invest in it.
Landowners and land managers of working landscapes support healthy ecosystems that provide real value back to people and communities, all while trying to maintain economic viability. These landowners deserve to be acknowledged for the socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological benefits they provide to America's wildlife. By incentivizing conservation, minimizing regulatory and economic liabilities, and providing long-term assurances and regulatory certainty, CWC helps landowners successfully balance competing goals while keeping working lands working. Predictability is not a concession. It's a conservation tool.
Conservation has to work at the scale the land actually demands.
To meet today's challenges, CWC combines and coordinates complementary efforts to achieve enduring conservation at landscape scale. Voluntary and collaborative conservation that keeps working lands working leads to more sustainable and durable outcomes than a narrow reliance on regulatory approaches alone. What works in one watershed should be able to work in the next. That's the goal, not isolated wins, but a replicable model for conservation across the country.
The authority has always been there. We just need to use it.
The Endangered Species Act contains significant flexibility that has historically gone underutilized. Creative exploration of that flexibility, along with other existing statutes and programs, expands opportunities for voluntary collaboration to conserve listed, at-risk, and common wildlife species on working lands. CWC doesn't work around the ESA. It works within it, creatively and proactively, to get ahead of listings before they become necessary and to deliver recovery outcomes when they do.
This is bigger than any one species, landscape, or agreement.
CWC supports the transformative change toward voluntary collaboration that is emerging across wildlife conservation on working lands. An enduring cultural shift is necessary to make voluntary collaboration the preferred approach, the instinct government, landowners, industry, conservation groups, and society reach for first. That shift doesn't happen through policy alone. It happens when enough people have seen it work, believe it's possible, and choose to lead with trust instead of conflict.
