Summary: Building on Momentum, Approaching Strategic Change

We have converged around a vision and strategy for healthy communities and ecosystems. Now it is time to focus our energies and prioritize investment of scarce resources to maximize progress toward these goals.  General characteristics of the implementation strategy are:

• Work to align the strategies of all sorts of organizations within the Park with this vision and strategy so that we are all moving in the same direction.  Use their existing knowledge to improve the strategy and make the implementation plans more detailed.
• Where possible, develop plans that encompass the entire Park, or where it makes more sense, the whole North Country.  Develop pilots or models with an eye to replicating them in other towns or sub-regions in the years to come.
• Work cooperatively; avoid duplication and dilution of effort and resources.  Find out who else is working this issue and share plans, experience and insights.
• Engage the private sector and active citizens in implementation of this strategy, it cannot just be a government only effort and succeed
• Continue to build trust and mutual respect to enable us to approach making strategic changes to the regulatory regime and the delivery of government services

The vision articulated by the project is in many ways a summation of what we are already doing and where we actually are already trying to get to. By recognizing it and enhancing it, we can now better align existing efforts and understand where the gaps are that need to be filled.  Thus, many of the early implementation steps involve information sharing and collaborative development of specific project plans.