Bozeman, Mont. — PERHAPS, like me, you were among the tens of millions who visited one of our national parks this year. If you did, you most likely shared my appreciation for the foresight of previous generations to set aside treasures like Yellowstone. This legacy of conservation has long served as a point of pride for our country, and rightly so.

The federal government’s creation and protection of vast, iconic places largely came to a halt in the mid-1950s. But there is a new model for conserving large, ecologically valuable landscapes and the wildlife that depends on them — one that does not rely on lobbying for government action and funding. It is a hybrid, combining existing public lands with private resources and a businesslike approach to securing land, restoring wildlife and benefiting people.

It is being applied in places like Mozambique, for example, where the philanthropist Greg Carr is working to rebuild Gorongosa National Park and the communities that surround it through a public-private partnership between the Mozambique government and the Gorongosa Restoration Project; and in South America at Conservacion Patagonica, founded by the conservationists Kris and the late Doug Tompkins, which is purchasing land to create new national parks for the people of Argentina and Chile.