A Mosaic of Stewardship
by Dave Herrero, Four Corners Regional Director
One of the words I always stop on in my conservation reading is mosaic.
I like the word, and the idea, because it is both scientific and poetic. In ecology, a mosaic simply means a patchwork of different pieces on a landscape, such as vegetation types, habitats, or land uses. Sometimes these mosaics are healthy: imagine a canyon floor where grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs intermingle beneath a ribbon of riparian tree cover, offering the shade, water, and refuge that make desert survival possible. Other times they are dysfunctional: imagine the same canyon floor where roads slice through riparian cover, invasive plants choke the streamside, and scattered development fragments the refuge, leaving the mosaic brittle and unable to sustain the diversity it once held.
That is what makes the term so rich, and so metaphorical. It forces us to ask not just what pieces make up the landscape, but how they fit together. Do they connect, complement, and strengthen one another? Or do they isolate, fragment, and erode what should be whole?
It can be helpful to think of conservation partnerships in the same way. No single agency, nonprofit, or private landowner can, on their own, guarantee the health of landscapes as vast and varied as the deserts, coasts, and mountains we enjoy.
It takes a mosaic of stewards: federal agencies managing public lands, tribal governments carrying forward millennia of knowledge and responsibility, grassroots groups who organize and educate, and private conservancies like The Wildlands Conservancy that strategically protect lands critical for access, habitat, and connectivity. Each plays a distinct role, and the strength of the pattern depends on how well the pieces align.
National Public Lands Day, celebrated this year on September 27, is a reminder of that truth. Across the country, volunteers will gather to plant trees, restore trails, and care for lands that belong to us all. Much of this work is made possible by local partners who guide, organize, and sustain a culture of conservation. In southeast Utah, we especially celebrate the Bears Ears Partnership, whose “Visit With Respect” program has become a national model for pairing education with stewardship. Their work, like that of countless “Friends of” groups stretching from the high desert to the coast, from canyon to mountain range, ensures that volunteer energy becomes lasting impact. Each is a vital tile in the larger stewardship mosaic.
The Wildlands Conservancy’s role is different, but complementary. We do not manage federal lands; we focus instead on the private parcels that knit public landscapes together. Often these tracts are small compared to the millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management or U.S. Forest Service. But in a mosaic, even a single piece can determine whether the picture holds. Like a keystone species in an ecosystem, some parcels play an outsized role: a ranch at the mouth of a canyon may provide the only public access to a wilderness area; a desert wash held in conservation may secure a wildlife corridor linking mountain to mesa. In an era when political priorities shift and agency budgets fluctuate, private lands protected in perpetuity can act as anchors of stability in the larger conservation design.
That is why our acquisitions, from Cottonwood Wash in southeast Utah to the Beaver Valley Headwaters in northern California and beyond, are always chosen with the larger mosaic in mind. When evaluating a potential acquisition we might ask: Is this parcel adjacent to public or private lands? Does it hold cultural or historic significance? What habitats or species are present, and will protection enhance biodiversity? Can it secure habitat corridors or cultural landscapes? Will we be able to steward it effectively with our partners and resources? Could its protection catalyze broader landscape-scale conservation? Will it guarantee access for the public? Each question circles back to the same idea: how will this piece contribute to the integrity of the whole?
The metaphor matters because conservation and stewardship are not linear or static, but dynamic and living processes. Just as an ecosystem thrives when species play complementary roles, so too does a region thrive when different stewards bring different strengths. Agencies bring authority and scale. Tribes bring deep cultural and ecological knowledge. Local nonprofit organizations bring community roots and the ability to educate and mobilize. And nonprofit land conservancies bring the tools and innovation needed to secure critical pieces of land against development or neglect.
Together, we form a mosaic that may sometimes be messy or fragile, but is always stronger when the pieces connect. On National Public Lands Day, we invite you to see yourself as part of that pattern. Whether you volunteer on a trail crew, support the work of groups like Bears Ears Partnership, or contribute to a Wildlands land protection effort, you are a tile in the greater whole.
Landscapes endure not because of any single act of protection, but because of the web of relationships that sustain them. In the end, both ecosystems and conservation communities share the same secret: resilience through diversity.