The Conservation Fund completed the Kent County, Delaware Rapid Assessment of Green Infrastructure in 2006. The rapid assessment delineates the County’s ecological network of forests, wetlands, and aquatic systems; evaluates existing working landscape protection programs, and identifies development management and land conservation tools that can be used to achieve local and state conservation objectives.
The State’s Livable Delaware initiative is a strategy to combat land consumptive sprawl by well-designed growth to areas where new development is planned. Key goals of the initiative include protection of cropland, commercially viable forestland, and natural resource and recreation priorities. Building on the Fund’s partnership with the State that published Better Models for Development in Delaware, the Fund expanded on its philosophy that the most important model for development is first assessing where development should not take place.
Using the green infrastructure approach to strategic conservation, the Fund delineated the Delaware Ecological Network, prepared protected lands and working landscape inventories, and performed an historical evaluation of the State’s purchase of development rights program for agricultural lands. The Fund also convened a Leadership Forum of over 20 public and private conservation partners to provide input on green infrastructure suitability analysis and land parcel scoring systems for ecological systems and working landscapes. Based on the results from the Leadership Forum and Network Design, the Fund developed an Implementation Quilt with recommendations on where State funding and policy can be directed to achieve the most beneficial and cost effective strategies for ecological and working landscape protection.
The rapid assessment identified 48,400 acres of unprotected land inside Kent County’s green infrastructure network, encompassing approximately 130,000 acres (or 34%) of the County’s land area. The assessment also identified 60,000 acres as an appropriate target to achieve the Livable Delaware goal for productive farmland in Kent County and recommended $8 million in annual funding to achieve this target by 2024. A transfer of development rights program also was recommended to complement existing State and Federal acquisition efforts.
The Delaware Ecological Network (DEN) is a statewide conservation network developed from GIS and field-collected data. The DEN, based on principles of landscape ecology and conservation biology, provides a consistent framework to help identify and prioritize areas for natural resource protection. Read the full article by Ted Weber on the Journal of Conservation Planning website.
The Community of Practice is a virtual hub of knowledge and ideas – shared among peers – to promote the application of green infrastructure concepts and principles to the nation’s conservation priorities. Learn more »
Series of ten case studies featuring green infrastructure success stories from around the country.
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