Rabbit Island was just added to the national Conservation Registry. The Conservation Registry is an online database that tracks and maps conservation, restoration and wildlife projects across the U.S. It was launched in 2008 and to date it is the most comprehensive repository of geospatially-specific project information in the U.S. By scrolling across the site’s map you can see most of the conserved land in the nation.
We came across this site while researching websites that combine mapping with prospective conservation planning.
It is a dream of ours to become involved in this space and collaborate with developers and designers to combine crowd-sourcing with mapping tools that document property lines, watersheds, and existing open spaces. As real estate evolves will property transactions occur with a conscience? Picture Things Organized Neatly applied to land use and you get the idea, as currently land parcelization is anything but neat from an ecological perspective anywhere outside of the mountains. We definitely need a better way to create islands amidst the grid!
At some point we need to choose what is needed of the environment prospectively, according to the science of sustainability (i.e. how much land is needed and where exactly it should be located to sequester/offset the byproduct of the rest of our activities), and then secondarily create policy and market solutions to obtain this in the context of disjointed lands previously cut up and assigned various non-natural functions (roads, parcels, parking lots, subdivisions, etc). Celebrating the value of the intact nature of the island (art!), exemplifying restraint with regards to its potential development, and then (hopefully) using this to help promote the idea that everybody should be able to access nature and learn from it, is, perhaps, one of the larger premises of the Rabbit Island project.
Lately we’ve been brainstorming with the team from Why Don’t We Own This? in Detroit and are working on some interactive maps using the 2012 Keweenaw Country Land Atlas and Plat Book. Stay tuned. With a little luck this will develop into a functional tool that helps the community buy and sell land with purpose. If you are interested in collaboration please get in touch.
The Rabbit Island Conservation Registry page can be seen here.
Other finds: