Credit: (Jim Wright/The Nature Conservancy) New Jersey Highlands Last month, preservation efforts in the Highlands region of the state got a multimillion-dollar boost from the Open Space Institute, a national nonprofit that works to protect land throughout the Appalachian range. The initiative, called the Appalachian Landscapes Protection Fund, aims to raise up to $18 million to conserve 50,000 acres of forest throughout the Appalachian range. Unlike traditional open-space acquisition initiatives, in which the priority is simply to preserve land, this fund will focus on state and local communities, land trusts, and Native American tribes that will “align their conservation goals around climate priorities.”