The role of rural communities in biodiversity conservation and the transition to sustainability: Practical experiences from the Pacific Northwest United States

This paper provides an overview of biodiversity conservation and rural community sustainable development in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. After a short context-setting section, several community-based and sector case studies representative of the forest, agriculture and fishing communities are presented. Relevant lessons are drawn from each case. The authors hope the experiences and insights from these cases will be helpful to leaders concerned with impacts to and possible measures to promote biodiversity conservation and rural sustainability. The most important lesson, of all that are presented in this paper, is that rural sustainability will only be realized if local stakeholders communicate and coordinate with each other and that there is a recognition that healthy rural ecosystems will economically benefit communities if they use the resources wisely to assure long-term opportunities.