Land to Water to Gulf: Three Short Films
The Partnership for Gulf Coast Land Conservation (the Gulf Partnership) is a collaboration of 26 local, regional and national land trusts across the Gulf Coast region. The Gulf Partnership formed in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, under the umbrella of the Land Trust Alliance, to bring attention to the need for land conservation as a part of Gulf recovery and restoration.
This year Becky Prado became the first Executive Director as it became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
In August, the Gulf Partnership released three short films to illustrate the connections between protecting land in the coastal region and the health of the waters downstream and in the Gulf.
Why? Water quality, estuaries and fish and marine habitat in the Gulf of Mexico is continually affected by land-based decisions that landowners and community leaders make every day. It isn’t always easy to see the connections between farming practices happening 50 miles upstream and healthy oysters and shrimp. Or how the development of a new neighborhood in the northern reaches of the county, or even further upstream, can hurt water quality at the beach. Or even how clearing land inland can cause flooding downstream.
The Gulf Partnership found that there were no great digital communication pieces out there to explain why protecting land will help the Gulf ecosystem recover. So, with a small grant from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the RESTORE Council, land trust partners from Mississippi joined forces with Mississippi State University’s Television Center to develop three 10-minute films designed for landowners, community leaders and coastal residents. Each film tells a story from the view of a coast resident and features land trust leaders and other experts.
The films, entitled “It’s a Journey,” “To Better our Community” and “This is our Home," can be found on the Gulf Partnership’s website. While the films were shot in coastal Mississippi, the messages are applicable across the Gulf states and are available for anyone to view, download and share.