Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture
Business Model (Draft)
June 2004
INTRODUCTION…
The Changing Face of Bird Conservation – the Role of Joint Ventures: As regional
bird conservation partnerships, Joint Ventures can trace their genesis to the 1986 North
American Waterfowl Management Plan. A conservation plan continental in scope was
largely unheard of at the time, and the NAWMP called for biological, institutional, and
strategic changes in the business of waterfowl conservation that were as fundamental as
they were unprecedented – changes that have since been reiterated, refined, and
reinforced by an increasingly complex private, state, federal bird conservation
community. Today, it is axiomatic that the bird conservation enterprise will be driven by
national and international plans that define conservation objectives from a continental
and even hemispheric perspective; that science-based planning will, through explicitly
stated, testable assumptions, link on-the-ground habitat management to large-scale
population goals; and that our collective habitat management efforts are to be so focused
as to elicit population responses at regional and continental scales. Today, Joint Ventures
are being looked to as not simply a forum for leveraging resources but as a vehicle for
delivering increasingly complex and comprehensive approaches to the business of bird
conservation.
The Business Model Concept and Its Applicability to Joint Ventures: The concept of
a business model is not traditional to the “business” of bird conservation or natural
resource management in general. Indeed, it is a concept that only recently has found
footing within the business world, as traditional “brick and mortar” enterprises have
sought to adjust to the challenges of e-commerce, and “.com” entrepreneurs have sought
to harness the potential of the internet economy.
Within the field of commerce, a business model is intended to speak to needs that go
beyond those addressed by the more traditional “business plan”, “strategic plan”, or
“annual operating plan.” The business model is emerging as the vehicle for defining the
underlying, otherwise unstated, assumptions and core beliefs that when articulated
explain to audiences both internal and external why a business exists; the value-added
services and products it seeks to provide; how it seeks to position itself in the external
marketplace; and the operational principles and framework upon which its human and
capital resources are arrayed and allocated. If effective, a business model will respond to
one of the principle tenets espoused by management theorists, that being that many
businesses fail or decline because the assumptions that underlie their decisions (about
society, markets, customers, products, technology, and mission) are made obsolete and
invalid by a constantly changing business environment.
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The partners of the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture are of the view that
fundamental changes are likewise underway in the “business environment” of natural
resource management and especially so in the field of bird conservation. More
specifically, we are of the belief:

That the conservation paradigm as a whole is shifting – from a value-based,
opportunistic pursuit of site-specific conservation benefits toward the sciencebased pursuit of predicted landscape sustainability.

That the emerging paradigm will increasingly require the integration of science
and information management technologies into the full spectrum of the bird
conservation enterprise – planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and
research.

And that the vision of integrated bird conservation presupposes that on a
partnership basis planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and research
will be coordinated and facilitated as an iterative whole.
It is within this changing conservation environment that the partners of the LMV Joint
Venture turn to the concept of a business model in an effort to articulate and refine the
core beliefs and assumptions that have underpinned our collective success to date and
that can guide our diverse but like-minded members in refining and maintaining a
partnership infrastructure that will continue to serve the implementation of national and
international bird conservation plans within the LMV region. We invite comments and
insights aimed at applying and refining the business-model concept to the vision of
integrated bird conservation.
PURPOSE AND MISSION…
Purpose: The Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) Joint Venture is a self-directed, nonregulatory private, state, federal conservation partnership that exists for the purpose of
implementing the goals and objectives of national and international bird conservation
plans within the Lower Mississippi Valley region.
This purpose acknowledges a functional, scale-sensitive relationship between the LMV
Joint Venture and national/international bird conservation plans. It recognizes that the
broad goals and objectives of continental plans provide the focus and direction for Joint
Venture actions, but that continental plans themselves find their fruition only within the
region-specific actions of Joint Venture partners. Accordingly, the LMV Joint Venture
partnership will operate not only with the purpose of implementing national/international
plans but also with the aim of supporting their progressive refinement. Success will
require that Joint Venture partners approach biological planning, population and habitat
monitoring, and evaluation and research in a manner that is instructive to conservation at
the continental as well as regional scale.
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In being non-regulatory, the LMV Joint Venture does not address harvest regulation or
take positions on matters pertaining to environmental impact assessment of development
projects. Such positions are left to the purview of individual partners through established
regulatory processes.
Mission Statement: The LMV Joint Venture will function as the forum in which the
private, state, federal conservation community develops a shared vision of bird
conservation for the LMV region; cooperates in its implementation; and collaborates in
its refinement.
As such, the LMV Joint Venture will function not simply as a forum for discussion but as
a vehicle for coordinated planning, implementation, and evaluation. While the vision of
integrated bird conservation is subservient to the mission and authorities of individual
organizations, Joint Venture partners operate on the premise that their otherwise
independent actions are to be pursued in the context of a collective mission, and that each
bears a responsibility to the implementation of national and international conservation
plans that can be achieved only to the extent it is shared.
PARTNERSHIP SCOPE…
Operational Scope: The operational scope of the LMV Joint Venture emanates from the
operational goal established for integrated bird conservation partnerships by the U.S.
Committee of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative, that being “to deliver the
full spectrum of bird conservation through regionally based, biologically driven,
landscape-oriented partnerships”; and from Director’s Order No. 146 of the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, “Joint Venture Administration.” In both scope and vision, these
documents presume that regional Joint Venture partnerships will seek to integrate as an
iterative whole the full range of activities that encompass the bird conservation
enterprise. Thus the operational scope of the LMV Joint Venture will encompass bird
conservation planning and implementation, population and habitat monitoring, and
evaluation and research.
Biological/Taxonomic Scope: The LMV Joint Venture’s conservation efforts and
energies will be directed at the protection, restoration, and management of those species
of North American avifauna and their habitats (endemic to the LMV Region)
encompassed by the North American Waterfowl Management Plan (NAWMP); North
American Land Bird Conservation Plan; United States Shorebird Conservation Plan
(USSCP); North American Waterbird Conservation Plan (NAWCP); and Northern
Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI). These national/international plans are together
recognized as encompassing the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI).
Geographic Scope: Figure 1 depicts the administrative boundary of the LMV Joint
Venture and its relationship to Bird Conservation Regions (BCR) established by NABCI.
Joint Venture planning, implementation, and evaluation will be BCR-specific; and thus
the primary geographic focus of the LMV Joint Venture will be the two BCR’s lying
entirely or mostly within the LMVJV administrative boundary – the Mississippi Alluvial
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Valley and West Gulf Coastal Plain. However, Joint Venture planning, implementation,
and evaluation extend in varying degrees to the limits of the Joint Venture’s
administrative boundary. The Management Board will give consideration to realigning
administrative boundaries to more closely conform to BCR boundaries at such time as
BCR-specific partnerships emerge in those Bird Conservation Regions lying only
partially or tangentially within the LMVJV administrative boundary.
FUNCTIONS AND SERVICES…
The NABCI goal of “regionally based, biologically driven, landscape-oriented”
conservation requires that as a partnership the Joint Venture serve functions and provide
services that extend across state boundaries and that often transcend the jurisdictional
reach and capability of any individual partner. Accordingly, member agencies and
organizations will seek to provide through their collective actions value-added services in
the following areas.

Support to national/international bird conservation initiatives in stepping down
continental or range-wide goals and objectives of national and international plans
to ecoregional-specific population targets, habitat objectives, and conservation
strategies.

Iterative science-based planning and landscape-level prioritization that focuses
conservation programs on the most environmentally sensitive portions of the
landscape.

Development of a partnership infrastructure that allows the full spectrum of the
bird conservation enterprise (planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation,
and research) to function as an iterative whole.

Coordinated application of geospatial and other information management
technologies to support conservation at ecoregional scales.

Coordinated and leveraged delivery of private, state, federal conservation
programs targeted at priority habitats.
OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK…
Figure 2 depicts the broad framework through which the LMV Joint Venture operates in
providing these functions and services. The operational premise behind the framework
is that a partnership infrastructure will be developed that distinguishes between three
distinct but interrelated “spheres” of activity and is supported by a network of geospatial
and information management capability. This framework is intended to address two
broad challenges confronting the bird conservation community. The first is creating (and
sustaining) a partnership infrastructure that links habitat management with conservation
planning and both to monitoring, evaluation, and research. The second challenge is one
of aligning and deploying existing resources to confront the demand for more scientific
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rigor in developing goals, objectives, and priorities and more intensive application of
geospatial, remote sensing, and information management technologies.
The assumption here stated is that the long term success of the Joint Venture concept
hinges not simply on how partners allocate new resources but on how existing people,
processes, and programs respond to a conservation paradigm that places an increasing
premium on the often technology-demanding methodologies of science-based
conservation. Each sphere of activity defined below requires the focused application of a
set of core competencies and skills that are currently dispersed throughout the programoriented workforce of individual partners. The intent of the three-sphered operating
framework is to allow existing personnel to operate within teams and working groups that
are focused on those value-added functions and services that contribute not simply to
“implementing the Joint Venture” but that help each agency and organization respond
internally to the increasing demands for science-based, landscape-oriented conservation.
Biological Foundation: It is within this sphere of activity that Joint Venture partners
establish a biological basis and scientific rationale for the wide array of management
actions deployed across the landscape. The focus is two fold: 1) biological planning that
links on-the-ground habitat objectives to predicted population response on the basis of
explicitly stated, testable assumptions; and 2) the development of monitoring programs
and feedback mechanisms that link management and science in an adaptive learning
process. The partnership infrastructure will typically be organized around technical
working groups or teams consisting of interagency personnel with specialized knowledge
of population/habitat interrelationships and experience in applying the scientific method
to resource planning and analysis. In keeping with the business approach to Joint
Venture implementation, LMV partners working within the biological foundation sphere
will develop and progressively refine the following “products” of a sound biological
foundation.

Regional population targets that emanate from national and international plans.

Biological models of population/habitat relationships that reflect explicitly stated,
testable assumptions.

Population-based habitat objectives expressed at multiple spatial scales.

Research directed at testing the models and assumptions articulated within
population sustainability models.

Ecoregional-scale population and habitat monitoring programs.
Conservation Design: Within this sphere of activity, Joint Venture partners will direct
their energies at increasing their collective capability to:
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
Assess ecosystem change at ecoregional and landscape scales (focusing on those
parameters deemed most pertinent to sustaining bird populations at prescribed
levels).

Identify the most environmentally sensitive portions of the landscape.

Articulate a compelling vision of landscape sustainability.

Provide landscape-level decision support for conservation delivery.
Recognizing that conservation design and the development of a sound biological
foundation are procedurally allied and iterative in nature, Appendix A outlines in more
detail the procedural elements of biological planning and conservation design as defined
by LMV Joint Venture partners.
Conservation Delivery: The LMV business model focuses on two primary avenues for
effecting on-the-ground habitat change. The first involves the coordinated and leveraged
application of programs endemic to Joint Venture partners. As a partnership, the Joint
Venture is the beneficiary of an extensive and proven conservation delivery infrastructure
girded by clear legislative and administrative authorities and procedures. Accordingly,
the LMV model does not call for the Joint Venture to operate as a funding program,
accumulating and dispensing project funds that might otherwise be spent through the
programmatic structure of individual members. Instead, the LMV model reflects a core
belief that the habitat programs of its individual partners should be guided by the sciencebased, landscape-oriented conservation planning that is a key element of the Joint
Venture’s value-added functions and services. Secondly, the LMV model recognizes that
the greatest opportunities for effecting positive landscape change often lie outside the
operational purview of wildlife agency programs, with Farm Bill programs being a
notable example. In this context, the Joint Venture partnership will function as a
purveyor of science-based goals and objectives and decision support tools that can target
a broader range of conservation actions to the most environmentally sensitive portions of
the landscape. This model of conservation delivery will require that Joint Venture
partners place heavy emphasis on the following actions.
1. Ensure that the products of biological planning and conservation design, i.e.
population-based habitat objectives, spatially explicit decision support models,
etc., are translated into the program-specific goals, objectives, and priorities of
State Wildlife Grant Program plans, Refuge Comprehensive Conservation Plans,
annual operating plans of interagency private lands programs, etc.
2. Pursue opportunities for leveraging individual resources through site-specific
project partnerships.
3. Inform the delivery of conservation programs lying outside the direct operational
purview of the bird conservation community, e.g. Farm Bill programs, with
science-based priorities and decision support models.
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4. Pursue emerging opportunities within other programs affecting the development
of land and water resources, in particular the Department of Energy’s terrestrial
carbon sequestration initiative.
Geomatics Network: The LMV business model calls for the three distinct but
interrelated spheres of conservation activity described above to be linked and supported
by a geomatics network. The word “geomatics” has only recently entered the lexicon of
the information technology community. It speaks to the development, storage, retrieval,
distribution, and use of spatial data pertinent to conserving the earth’s biotic features. In
this sense, geomatics encompasses not only geographic information system (GIS)
technology but also remote sensing; the development and management of relational
databases; and web-interface technologies. These four – GIS, remote sensing, relational
databases, and web-interfaces – can be thought of as the quartet of information
technologies upon which science-based, landscape-level approaches to conservation will
increasingly depend.
The information technology vision of the LMV business model is two-fold:

The otherwise independent GIS labs of partners are connected and coordinating as
a “virtual lab” – developing, distributing, and maintaining the spatial data
necessary for partner-based conservation at ecoregional scales.

Managers, planners, and researchers are sharing communal conservation data
accessed and updated through web-based information management technologies.
Accordingly, a Geomatics Network will be presumed to exist at a level commensurate
with the progress being made on these two fronts.
Joint Venture partners will pursue the vision of a geomatics network by increasing their
internal geomatics capabilities; coordinating their otherwise independent geomatics
efforts in the same sense as conservation delivery is coordinated; and by enhancing the
geomatics capabilities of the Joint Venture Support Office. The intent on the latter point
is that the Joint Venture Office support and augment at the BCR scale the often statespecific efforts of individual partners and that the Joint Venture Office develop and
maintain a web-based capability to serve ecoregional scale geospatial data.
PARTNERSHIP INFRASTRUCTURE…
The Joint Venture’s partnership infrastructure consists of a Management Board, Joint
Venture Support Office, and numerous Working Groups and Teams organized around the
three-sphere framework described above.
Management Board: The LMV Joint Venture is overseen and directed by a private,
state, federal Management Board. Membership is open to any agency or organization
that by virtue of mission or legislative authority commits to sharing in the responsibility
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of implementing national and international bird conservation plans within the LMV
region. Member organizations are expected to commit energy and resources to
developing a shared vision of bird conservation for the LMV and coordinating their
otherwise independent actions in the cooperative pursuit and refinement of that vision.
Management Board representatives are expected to represent their agency or organization
at an administrative and policy level on matters pertaining to allocating human and
financial resources to the protection, restoration, and management actions that are
inherent to sustained, long term conservation. Member agencies and organizations and
their current representatives are listed in Table 1.
Recognizing that the commitment of Member agencies/organizations is voluntary and
subservient to the organization’s mission, authorities, and budgetary capabilities,
Management Board members are expected to participate regularly and fully in advancing
the goals and objectives of the LMV Joint Venture. Board members will be expected to
attend two Management Board meetings a year; participate in conference calls or ad hoc
working groups; and fulfill other such responsibilities in the course of a year as may be
deemed appropriate by the Board as a whole. Appendix B provides additional detail on
the Management Board’s operating procedures.
As further described in Appendix B, the Management Board is open on an adjunct basis
to agencies, organizations, or individuals whose mission may not lend itself to sharing
fully in the broad spectrum of conservation actions inherent in implementing national and
international bird conservation plans but yet have an abiding interest in a joint
commitment of energies and resources on specific areas of mutual concern, e.g. carbon
sequestration, sustainable forestry, or wetland restoration.
LMV Joint Venture Support Office: In furthering the purpose and mission of the Joint
Venture, the Management Board will be supported by a full time professional and
technical staff. While the Joint Venture Support Office may from time to time receive
funding and staff from other partners, the Office will operate as a field station of the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service in the service of the Joint Venture Management Board. The
Joint Venture Coordinator and associated staff will be responsible for facilitating,
guiding, and leading the various working groups created by the Board in pursuing all
facets of Joint Venture implementation associated with the partnership functions and
services enumerated above.
Working Groups: Management Board representatives will engage their professional
and technical staff in the various facets of Joint Venture implementation through the
forum of permanent or ad hoc “Working Groups” or “Teams.” A summary of the current
working group structure is provided below. The charter under which each Working
Group operates is included as Appendix C.
LMV Joint Venture Science Team.
Geomatics Network Committee.
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Carbon Sequestration Working Group.
Shorebird Working Group.
Colonial Waterbird Working Group.
WGCP Conservation Planning Team.
WGCP Waterfowl Working Group.
WGCP Land Bird Working Group.
MAV Waterfowl Working Group.
COMMUNICATIONS …
Progress and pace of the LMV Joint Venture partnership are inherently dependent on
interactive communications operating internally (inreach) among the professional
workforce of regional conservation partners. Two preeminent challenges arise as the
LMV Joint Venture strives to function under a more deliberate and scientifically rigorous
process in pursuit of defining “how much, how much more, where, and when” to achieve
predicted sustainability of avian populations. First, there are no tried and true
methodologies—we rely on theories emanating from academia, technological advances,
and innovative (perhaps clairvoyant) conservationists. Fortunately, processes are
emerging both from within and outside the LMV Joint Venture and its evident that
methods are data hungry, analytically intense, and technology demanding. Hence the
second challenge, that being the technical and personnel demands of novel approaches
and involved processes are not aligned well with the current conservation infrastructure
developed almost exclusively to deliver and manage habitats, assess environmental
impacts, and regulate populations. While new monies will certainly expedite learning,
the greatest advancements will occur as Partners’ commit to reengineer the current
institutional establishment around distributed and clearly understood responsibilities.
Said another way, the successes the LMV Joint Venture has experienced to date have
relied on an institutional fusion of cross-partner expertise where each organization has
(re)directed their personnel and financial resources to operate in new technical arenas,
wrestle through non-traditional conceptual challenges, and improve the linkages between
internal Programs and population sustainability. Paramount to continued success of a
maturing partnership in pursuit of a bio-sustainable conservation paradigm is a
communication strategy that heightens the engagement from the conservation community
and coordinates partner-specific/individual roles, relationships, and responsibilities
among and within the three spheres of conservation.
Inreach. By “inreach” we speak specifically to the conservation community operating
primarily within the LMV Joint Venture region, but also refers to conservationists
working in other Ecoregions and at national and international scales. The highest priority
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of LMV Joint Venture communications seeks to cultivate the natural resource
practitioners of the MAV and WGCP Bird Conservation Regions consistent with the
scope of the Operational Framework and among the aforementioned Partnership
Infrastructure. As such, the LMV Joint Venture will ensure progress and processes being
developed by species- or issue-specific working groups are being shared with other
working groups/committees; and products emanating from within one “sphere” are being
properly carried forward to succeeding working groups functioning “in” adjacent spheres.
For example, population-based habitat objectives for forest breeding birds emanating
from a Landbird Working Group (biological foundation sphere) must be understood and
available in both tabular and GIS form to a Team charged with spatially configuring a
landscape that will meet the needs of multiple species groups. Products and information
from those exercises in turn, must be available such that land managers can translate
biological-based habitat objectives into Program objectives. Finally, on-the-ground
habitat protection, restoration, and enhancement projects must be spatially and tabularly
tracked to provide feedback mechanisms enabling adaptive resource management.
Secondarily, The LMV Joint Venture will continue to share experiences and lessons
learned with our counter-parts working in other joint ventures/BCRs and participate in
ecoregional and national conservation planning forums. The LMV Joint Venture will
find opportunities to “cross-pollinate” concepts and techniques emerging from within the
LMV Joint Venture with advancements of organizations/individuals/partnerships
occurring outside the LMV.
Outreach. The Joint Venture’s progressive approach to conservation planning will
generate new natural resource information that can be of great interest to legislators, civic
leaders, outdoor recreation enthusiasts, and the general public. Further, the individual
organizations comprising the Joint Venture have a vested interest in nurturing a more
enlightened and conservation-sensitive public. However, the LMV Joint Venture
operates as a partnership to strengthen the efficacy of science-based planning,
implementation, and evaluation and does not wish to overshadow individual partners or
their Programs. Thus, products emanating from Joint Venture partner activities will
become visible to the public by actions taken at the discretion and desires of individual
organizations. To facilitate this type of information flow, the LMV Joint Venture will
support an “information bank” available to the well-established communication
infrastructure of individual partners. Partners can access the information bank via their
public outreach specialists who can “withdraw” and customize messages to be
subsequently broadcast to their parochial constituents.
Appendix A: Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture Conservation Planning Process
Appendix B: Operational Procedures of the Lower Mississippi Valley Joint Venture
Management Board
Appendix C: Working Group Charters
Appendix XX: Products and Performance Measures Associated with Joint Venture
Implementation