The conservation community of the Caribbean can feel small, at times, or as vast as the ocean that surrounds us. In a growingly complex world of environmental and social obstacles it is imperative to work collaboratively across ecosystems, scales, disciplines and methodologies. Protecting natural and cultural resources is essential to sustaining our health and quality of life. People, along with the fish and wildlife, rely on clean water and the benefits of healthy rivers, streams, wetlands, forests, grasslands, coasts, coral reefs, estuaries and oceans in order to thrive. Equally as diverse and vibrant as our ecosystems are the Caribbean peoples, histories, and cultures that are arguably just as threatened as our natural resources. Managing the landscapes and seascapes that provide our natural and cultural resources is no small task, especially in light of changes in climate, land use, and economies. Researchers have been able to advance our understanding of our vulnerabilities and science products provide managers and communities the tools necessary to apply sound science to everyday decision-making. More is needed. With the signing of Secretarial Order No. 3289, the United States Department of the Interior launched the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) to better integrate science and management to address climate change and other landscape scale issues. Our partners work collaboratively to identify best practices, connect efforts, identify science gaps, and avoid duplication through conservation planning and design. By building a network that is holistic, collaborative, adaptive, and grounded in science, LCCs are working to ensure the sustainability of our economies, land, water, wildlife, and cultural resources. The Caribbean LCC (CLCC) works collaboratively to bridge science and action, land and sea.Early on in the development of the CLCC it became quite clear that in order to successfully identify shared priorities across the Caribbean islands of the United States (Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Navassa), and across the Caribbean basin, we would need to systematically “connect the dots“ between government agencies, coalitions, advocacy and scientific organizations, third sector parties, and individuals. The purpose of developing this compendium, along with a companion compendium covering the Insular Caribbean, Belize, Suriname, and Guayana, was to identify “who is doing what” and the interests and capacities of different organizations within the regional conservation community. Additionally, the information provided allows us to be more informed on gaps in governance or science, to avoid duplicating efforts, and to foster cross-scale communication to meet the conservation needs of research and management agencies and organizations in the Caribbean.Products of this effort include an interactive map (https://www.fws.gov/science/catalog) and compendiums of US Caribbean and Caribbean-wide conservation organizations, available online and in print.The value of this work has become clearer as we have progressed, and we now consider the human and social dimensions of conservation, and more specifically ecosystem governance, to be a critical pillar in the foundation of the CLCC’s work. Based on positive feedback from participants in the process of developing the compendiums, we plan to update the information on an annual basis and to keep the interactive map current throughout the year. We cannot do this work alone, however. We encourage all entities working in the Caribbean on the conservation of natural and cultural resources to actively communicate so these dots stay connected.
