WHAT IS STEWARDSHIP?

The Santa Cruz Mountains region, actively stewarded for thousands of years by indigenous people, is a place of significant cultural, biological, and environmental diversity which supports many native plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth.

The members of the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network feel that the act of stewardship toward land is based on the concept that landowners and land managers take good care of the land for its own sake and for the future, and not only for short-term personal gain. Good land stewardship occurs on both public and private lands, “preserved” and “working” lands, and effective stewardship of a large landscape or region requires an approach that promotes a wide range of beneficial uses or values, including but not limited to ecological, recreational, aesthetic, spiritual, cultural, and economic.

Stewardship Network members agree that effective land stewardship on a regional level is characterized by:

———
Emulating or enhancing natural ecosystem functions
———
An active, varied, “mosaic” approach that promotes a wide variety of conservation benefits, including the generation of responsibly produced resources and livelihoods from working lands
———
Experimenting with a range of stewardship practices as appropriate
———
Consistent monitoring and evaluation, adjusting land practices to improve results
———
Co-operative efforts and the sharing of critical information
———
Identifying and communicating the acceptable and unacceptable thresholds of threat or hazard from activities or events such as fire, and the consequences of action versus inaction
———
Responsible and responsive regulation that does not unduly hamper stewardship efforts
———
The availability of sufficient resources to achieve long-term goals
———
Supporting cultural relationship to the land

The members of the SCMSN feel that stewardship is a part of ecosystem health. Read a paper on the topic written for the Digital Atlas Project and published in Nature Sustainability: Including Stewardship in Ecosystem Health Assessment.