For the first time in 15 years, Nashville’s putting together a countywide plan for understanding the effects of its burgeoning growth on the natural environments around it.
The work’s only just begun. Nashville’s Planning Department launched the first phase of developing the new Ecological Conservation Strategy in March, but it’ll take until this time next year for a final version of the plan to be ready. It’ll be Nashville’s first conservation strategy since the 2011 Open Space Plan.
Once complete, the study’s meant to become a concrete action plan filled with conservation priorities, pilot projects and policy recommendations, all based on the expert analysis and community and stakeholder feedback gathered over the next year.
For now, that means
plenty of public engagement. So far, about 1,400 people have engaged with the first phase of the plan development process, and still more weighed in at the latest public meeting for the project Sept. 29.
Jennifer Dowdell is working on the project through Baltimore-based conservation planning firm Biohabitats and said Nashvillians' highest priorities so far include water quality in the county’s lakes and rivers, habitats for native wildlife species, and conserving and restoring forests and glades.
Survey respondents have also indicated that Nashville’s largest parks, from Shelby Bottoms to Beaman, are where people engage the most with Davidson County’s natural areas.
But part of the puzzle at this stage of the project is figuring out what’s missing from the conversation. For sustainability advocate Karen McIntyre, who weighed in at the public meeting, one of those missing pieces is education and developing an understanding that experiencing nature doesn’t only happen in Nashville’s public parks system.
“People experience nature the moment they step outside,” McIntyre said. “I think one of the things that the city misses out on is helping educate people.”
That’s in line with one of several draft goals Dowdell shared Sept. 29: enhancing education and awareness around conservation and the unique environmental character of Davidson County.
The early list of goals also includes increasing new housing and development near transit corridors to support conservation and minimize impacts on natural areas, protecting Nashville’s tree canopy and strengthening resilience to climate change.
Through June 2027, the project team is shifting focus to phase two of developing the strategy: creating a toolkit for ecological conservation strategies and piloting studies focused not only on the county as a whole but also on the Western Highland Rim — one of the largest continuous swaths of woodlands in the southeast U.S., about 127,000 acres of which are located in Nashville — and the downtown riverfront district.
Community engagement will continue as that work unfolds. Dowdell said what the team’s heard so far, especially from survey respondents who’ve pointed out specific features and areas of the county that they feel are important to consider, has been particularly valuable.
“To us, it continues to reinforce that there is deep knowledge within the community specific to ideas around ecology and biodiversity,” Dowdell said.
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's crafting its first ecological strategy since 2011. The work so far
