The Nature Conservancy

History

The Nature Conservancy developed out of an older organization known as the Ecological Society of America. The latter society was founded in 1915 and two years later formed a Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study, headed by Victor Shelford. Whereas the organization's leadership until then had focused on promoting research, while officially remaining neutral, in the course of the 1930s Shelford and his colleagues increasingly sought to advocate for conservation. The divide in viewpoints led the society to dissolve the committee, and, in 1946, Shelford and his colleagues formed the Ecologists' Union. The latter group eventually took the name "The Nature Conservancy", in emulation of the British agency of that name, which pursued a mission of conserving open space and wildlife preserves. The Nature Conservancy was incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization on October 22, 1951.

Approach

The Nature Conservancy takes a scientific approach to conservation, setting goals that describe the results it wants to achieve for biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy sets both long-term and near-term goals for conserving the abundance and geographic distribution of critical species and ecological systems. The organization's overall goal is to ensure the long-term survival of all biodiversity on Earth.

The Nature Conservancy works with all sectors of society including businesses, individuals, communities, partner organizations, and government agencies to achieve its goals. The Nature Conservancy is known for working effectively and collaboratively with traditional land owners such as farmers and ranchers, with whom it partners when such a partnership provides an opportunity to advance mutual goals. The Nature Conservancy is in the forefront of private conservation groups implementing prescribed fire to restore and maintain healthy ecosystems and working to address the threats to biodiversity posed by non-native and invasive plants and animals.

The Nature Conservancy has pioneered new land preservation techniques such as the conservation easement and debt for nature swaps. A conservation easement is a way for land owners to ensure that their land remains in its natural state while capitalizing on some of the land's potential development value. Debt for nature swaps are tools used to encourage natural area preservation in third world countries while assisting the country economically as well: in exchange for setting aside land, some of the country's foreign debt is forgiven.

The Conservancy believes that the private sector has an important role to play in advancing its conservation mission. The organization works to help businesses make better decisions, understand the value of nature, and ultimately protect it. Among the companies it works with are: 3M/3M Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, AmazonSmile, AT&T, Avon, Bank of America, Barrick Gold, BHP Billiton, Cargill, Inc., Caterpillar/Caterpillar Foundation, The Coca Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, Discovery Channel: North America, Disney The Dow Chemical Company, FEMSA, General Mills, Goldman Sachs, Harley-Davidson, IBM, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lowe’s/Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation, Microsoft, Oracle, Patagonia, PepsiCo Recycle for Nature, Swiss Re, UPS, Whole Foods Market.

Featured project sites

The Nature Conservancy's expanding international conservation efforts include work in North America, Central America, and South America, Africa, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, and Asia. Increasingly, the Conservancy focuses on developing global solutions at the intersection of nature’s and people’s needs. The solutions are areas where it aims to develop specific strategies and link them to its place-based work at the system scale. Below are a few examples of such work:

The Nature Conservancy was instrumental in the creation in 2004 of the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. The Conservancy's efforts in China's Yunnan province, one of the most vital centers of plant diversity in the northern temperate hemisphere, serve as a model for locally based ecotourism with a global impact. The Nature Conservancy and its conservation partner, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, are working to halt deforestation on private lands in and around the 1.8 million acre (7,300 km²) Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, along the Guatemala–Mexico border. In November 2004, 370,000 acres (1,500 km²) of threatened tropical forest in Calakmul were permanently protected under a historic land deal between the Mexican federal and state government, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, four local communities and the Conservancy.

The Nature Conservancy's programs in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are working together to build partnerships and enhance the profile of the conservation needs in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem by supporting voluntary, private land conservation of important wildlife habitat. In 2007, the Nature Conservancy made a 161,000-acre (650 km²) purchase of New York forestland from Finch Paper Holdings LLC for $110 million, its largest purchase ever in that state. In June 2008, The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land announced they reached an agreement to purchase approximately 320,000 acres (1,300 km²) of western Montana forestland from Plum Creek Timber Company (NYSE:PCL) for $510 million. The purchase, known as the Montana Legacy Project, is part of an effort to keep these forests in productive timber management and protect the area's clean water and abundant fish and wildlife habitat, while promoting continued public access to these lands for fishing, hiking, hunting and other recreational pursuits. As a follow-on, in 2015 The Nature Conservancy made a $134 million transaction to purchase 165,073 acres – 257 square miles – of forests, rivers and wildlife habitat in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington and in the Blackfoot River Valley in Montana. The Conservancy also acquired this land from Plum Creek, including 47,921 acres in the Yakima River Headwaters in Washington and 117,152 acres in the Lower Blackfoot River Watershed in Montana.

In December 2015, The Nature Conservancy announced the finalization of the first ever debt swap in Seychelles aimed at ocean conservation. The new protected area increases the country’s marine protected waters from less than 1 percent to more than 30 percent including support for the creation of the second largest Marine Protected Area in the Western Indian Ocean. The debt swap deal was made possible through a partnership with the Seychelles Ministry of Finance, support of debt-holding nations including France, and grants from private organizations led by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

Financing for this effort was organized by The Nature Conservancy's impact investing unit called NatureVest. NatureVest was created in 2014 with founding sponsorship from JPMorgan Chase & Co. with the stated goal of sourcing and putting to work at least $1 billion of impact investment capital for measurable conservation outcomes over three years. For their work on the Seychelles debt restructuring, The Nature Conservancy and JPMorgan Chase were given the FT/ITC Transformational Business Award for Achievement in Transformational Finance The award is given by the Financial Times and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) for ground-breaking, commercially viable solutions to development challenges.

Plant a Billion Trees campaign

The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees campaign is an effort to restore 2,500,000 acres (10,100 km²) of land and plant one billion trees by 2025 in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Each donated dollar results in one planted tree in the Atlantic Forest.

Environmental benefits

The Plant a Billion Trees campaign has also been identified as a tool to help slow climate change, as the Atlantic Forest – one of the biggest tropical forests in the world – helps regulate the atmosphere and stabilize global climate. The reforestation of the Atlantic Forest has the capability to remove 10 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. The Nature Conservancy states that this is equivalent to taking two million cars off the road. The Atlantic Forest's restoration could help to slow the process of climate change that is affecting the earth.

The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees campaign also aims to protect 10 critical watersheds in the Atlantic Forest that provide water and hydro power to more than 70 million people, create 20,000 direct jobs, and an additional 70,000 indirectly as part of this effort. The Plant a Billion Trees campaign is also associated with The Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program, which consists of nine locations, including Brazil.

Involvement in the community

The Nature Conservancy also features e-cards from the Atlantic Forest, as well as video of the Atlantic Forest and detailed information about the seedlings on their website. The website also features a news feed and an interactive map of the Atlantic Forest region in Brazil, as well as information on many of the plants, animals, and people that are impacted by the plight of the forest and who may benefit from its restoration.

Tree planting

The Nature Conservancy plants one tree in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil for each dollar donated by supporters. Some of the seeds being planted consist of:

History of the campaign

The Nature Conservancy launched the Plant a Billion Trees campaign in 2008 with a micro-site plantabillion.org that is affiliated but not hosted by The Nature Conservancy's website.

As a part of this launch, The Nature Conservancy pledged to plant 25 million trees as part of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s Billion Tree Campaign. This campaign encourages individuals and organizations to plant their own trees around the world and record this action on the website as a tally.

On Earth Day 2009, Disneynature's film Earth debuted, promising to plant a tree for every ticket sold to the film in its first week. This resulted in a donation of 2.7 million trees to the Plant a Billion Trees program.

Partnerships

The Plant a Billion Trees campaign has followed The Nature Conservancy's approach of partnering with larger organizations (such as Disneynature, Planet Green, Penguin Books, Payless Shoesource, AT&T, Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, and Visa) to leverage donations from supporters and increase efficiency and effectiveness of the campaign.

The Nature Conservancy and its scientists also work with other conservation organizations, local landowners, state and federal officials, agencies, and private companies to protect, connect, and buffer what is left of the Atlantic Forest.

Criticism

Over the years, The Nature Conservancy has faced a number of criticisms. They fall into the following main categories:

Too close to business

The Nature Conservancy has ties to many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical and agricultural industries. Its Board of Directors currently includes the retired chairman of Duke Energy, and executives from Merck, HP, Google and several financial industry groups. It also has a Business Council which it describes as a consultative forum that includes Bank of America, BP America, Cargill, Chevron, The Coca-Cola Company, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks Coffee Company. The organization faced criticism in 2010 from supporters for its refusal to cut ties with BP after the Gulf oil spill.

Writer and activist Naomi Klein has strongly criticized The Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas. Klein has also criticized The Nature Conservancy and other large environmental NGOs for their continued engagement with fossil fuel companies.

Questionable resale

There have been allegations of The Nature Conservancy obtaining land and reselling it at a profit, sometimes to supporters, who have then made use of it in ways which many perceived as being insufficiently environmentally friendly. The rationale for the resale has been that the profit allows The Nature Conservancy to increase its preservation of what the Nature Conservancy claims are more important locations. However, the Conservancy does have a no-net-profit policy that has been in effect for years for all transactions of this type. It has ways of ensuring that its disbursements will offset any illicitly-generated revenues.

Animal rights

Like many large environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund, the Conservancy has also been criticized for using hunting in its management policies. Retired General Norman Schwarzkopf, the Commander of coalition forces during the First Gulf War, and a member of the President's Conservation Counsel of the Conservancy, was also a member of the trophy hunting organization the Safari Club International.

Junk mail

The Nature Conservancy asks for monetary contributions, in part by sending out unsolicited promotional letters, calendars, et cetera (i.e., so-called junk mail). The practice of sending junk mail wastes millions of trees (per year), produces greenhouse gases equivalent to millions of cars (per year), and wastes billions of gallons of water (per year), according to the environmental impact group 41pounds.org.

Publication

The organization publishes The Nature Conservancy magazine (ISSN 1540-2428; six issues per year).