Founded | 1951[1] |
---|---|
Type | 501(c)(3) non-profit [2] |
Focus | Environmental conservation |
Headquarters | Arlington, Virginia, US |
Area served | Global |
Method | Conservation by design |
Members | 1+ million [3] |
Chief Executive Officer | Jennifer Morris |
Key people | Senator William Frist, Global Board Chair |
Revenue | US$1.29 billion (2018) [4] |
Website | www |
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. As of 2021, [update] it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members globally as of 2021 [update] and has protected more than 119 million acres (48 million ha) of land in its history. [5] As of 2014, [update] it is the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas.
The Nature Conservancy developed out of a scholarly organization initially known as the Ecological Society of America (ESA). [6] The ESA was founded in 1915, and later formed a Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study, headed by Victor Shelford. [6] [7] [8] The primary aim of Shelford was to find areas of land that would be beneficial for long-term research. [6] By the 1930s, Shelford and his colleagues such as Aldo Leopold increasingly sought to advocate for conservation. [6] The divide in viewpoints regarding scholarship or advocacy led the Society to dissolve the committee and in 1946, Shelford and his colleagues formed the Ecologists' Union. [6] [7] 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. [7]
As the organization grew, the organization focused largely on buying as much land as possible in the name of conservation with little scientific research conducted on land before being purchased. [6] Patrick Noonan served as President from 1973 to 1980 and spearheaded major land acquisitions, fundraising and decentralized growth of state programs. [9] In 1970 the organization hired its first staff scientist, Robert E. Jenkins Jr., who helped the organization refocus its mission to conserving natural diversity. [9] [6] With Noonan's support, in 1974 Jenkins began to partner with state governments to develop state-by-state inventories which assembled and stored data on the "elements" of nature (e.g. rare species and natural communities) and on "element occurrences" (the specific locations where they occur), [9] which later morphed into the Natural Heritage Network, a network of state natural heritage programs. [6]
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Nature's Land Brokers – documentary film highlighting project sites in Idaho, how the organization manages those sites, and how the organization works to find solutions for all stakeholders (Idaho Public Television, full episode) |
The Nature Conservancy's efforts include conservation in North America, Central America, and South America, Africa, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, and Asia. [10]
The Nature Conservancy and its conservation partner, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, 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. They brokered the protection of 370,000 acres (1,500 km2) of tropical forest in Calakmul. [11] In another program, TNC is working to protect wildlife habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
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. [12] [13] 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 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. [14] [15] [16] As a follow-on, in 2015 The Nature Conservancy made a $134 million transaction to purchase 165,073 acres (668.03 km2) – 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 (193.93 km2) in the Yakima River Headwaters in Washington and 117,152 acres (474.10 km2) in the Lower Blackfoot River Watershed in Montana. [17] [18]
Nature United is the Canadian affiliate of The Nature Conservancy. Nature United was founded as a Canadian charity in 2014, building on decades of conservation in Canada. Headquartered in Toronto, the organization has field staff located across the country. Nature United supports Indigenous leadership, sustainable economic development, and large-scale conservation, primarily in the Great Bear Rainforest, Clayoquot Sound, the Northwest Territories, and northern Manitoba. [19]
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. [20] 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. [21]
Financing for this effort was organized by The Nature Conservancy's impact investing unit called NatureVest. [22] [23] NatureVest was created in 2014 with founding sponsorship from JPMorgan Chase 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. [24] [25] 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. [26]
The Nature Conservancy's "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign is an effort to plant one billion trees across the globe in forests with the greatest need and has been operating since 2008 to plant trees in Brazil, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, and the United States. [27] [28] As part of the overall campaign, The Nature Conservancy pledged to plant 25 million trees as part of the launch of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s Billion Tree Campaign. [29] This campaign encourages individuals and organizations to plant their own trees around the world and record this action on the website as a tally. [30] Its "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign in Brazil aims to restore Brazil's Atlantic Forest by planting native trees on 2.5 million acres (10,000 km2) that have been deforested. [31]
The Plant a Billion Trees campaign has also been identified as a tool to help slow climate change with forest restoration being an effective way to help regulate emissions in the atmosphere and stabilize global climate. [32]
The Nature Conservancy has over one million members across the world as of 2021 [update] . [33] [34] As of 2014 [update] , it was the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas. [35]
The Nature Conservancy has ties to many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical and agricultural industries. [36] As of 2016 [update] , its board of directors included the retired chairman of Duke Energy, and executives from Merck, HP, Google and several financial industry groups. [37] It also has a Business Council which it describes as a consultative forum that includes Bank of America, BP America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks. [38] The organization faced criticism in 2010 from supporters for its refusal to cut ties with BP after the Gulf oil spill. [39] [40]
Writer and activist Naomi Klein has strongly criticized The Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas and for its continued engagement with fossil fuel companies. [41] [42] The Nature Conservancy responded by arguing that it had no choice, under the terms of a lease it signed years prior with an oil and gas company and later came to regret. [41]
In 2020, Bloomberg published an article claiming that some of the companies (such as JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and BlackRock) that purchase carbon credits from The Nature Conservancy were purchasing carbon credits for forests that did not need protection. [43]
In 2021, The Nature Conservancy partnered with Amazon to compensate local farmers for restoring and protecting rainforests in Para, Brazil. [44]
In 2022, a group of 158 conservation, environmental, and social justice non-profit organizations signed an open letter to the Conservancy's CEO, Jennifer Morris, charging that The Nature Conservancy was overly supportive of logging interests and the use of wood products as a natural climate solution. TNC is a member of the Forest Climate Working Group alongside wood product companies like Weyerhaeuser and Enviva, and other conservation organizations like the Trust for Public Land and American Forests. [45] [46]
The Charity Navigator gave The Nature Conservancy a 4-star rating, with a score of 96%, for the 2022 fiscal year. [47]
Like many large environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund, the Conservancy includes allowances for hunting and fishing within its management policies. The organization does not totally ban hunting or fishing but defers to state hunting and fishing regulations. [48]
The organization publishes The Nature Conservancy magazine ( ISSN 1540-2428; six issues per year).
In 2003 The Washington Post ran an investigative series about the Nature Conservancy with allegations of improper dealing and other improprieties that the Nature Conservancy contested. [49] In part, the Post alleged the Conservancy had, time and again, bought ecologically significant tracts of land, attached some development restrictions and then resold the properties to trustees and supporters at greatly reduced prices. [49] [50] The sales were part of a program that limits intrusive development but generally allows buyers to build homes on the land. [50] The buyers then gave the Conservancy cash that was roughly equivalent to the amount of the discounts. [50] That allowed the new owners to take significant tax deductions for charitable gifts. [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56]
The Nature Conservancy suspended a range of practices shortly after the articles ran including these sales, licensing its logo to corporations whose executives sat on the Conservancy's governing board and council, all new logging and other "resource extraction activities" such as oil and gas drilling on its nature preserves, and all new loans to employees. [50] The Conservancy launched an independent review that issued its final report in 2004, calling for sweeping reforms aimed at making the Conservancy a model of ethical standards for nonprofit organizations. [57]
After service as The Nature Conservancy's president for one year, Brian McPeek resigned on May 31, 2019, after a report on an internal investigation of sexual harassment was revealed by Politico and two other senior executives were ultimately dismissed based on its findings. [58] On June 7, 2019, Mark Tercek, CEO since 2008, announced his resignation following the resignation of McPeek. [59] On June 10, Luis Solorzano, executive director of The Nature Conservancy's Florida-based Caribbean chapter, became the fifth senior official to depart the organization. [60] On June 11, The Nature Conservancy's board chairman Thomas J. Tierney announced that board member and former US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell would serve as interim CEO, effective September 2019. [61]
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal and destruction of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, with half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. Estimates vary widely as to the extent of deforestation in the tropics. In 2019, nearly a third of the overall tree cover loss, or 3.8 million hectares, occurred within humid tropical primary forests. These are areas of mature rainforest that are especially important for biodiversity and carbon storage.
A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines a forest as, "Land spanning more than 0.5 hectares with trees higher than 5 meters and a canopy cover of more than 10 percent, or trees able to reach these thresholds in situ. It does not include land that is predominantly under agricultural or urban use." Using this definition, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 found that forests covered 4.06 billion hectares, or approximately 31 percent of the world's land area in 2020.
Reforestation is the practice of restoring previously existing forests and woodlands that have been destroyed or damaged. The prior forest destruction might have happened through deforestation, clearcutting or wildfires. Three important purposes of reforestation programs are for harvesting of wood, for climate change mitigation, and for ecosystem and habitat restoration purposes. One method of reforestation is to establish tree plantations, also called plantation forests. They cover about 131 million ha worldwide, which is 3% of the global forest area and 45% of the total area of planted forests.
A nature reserve is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, funga, or features of geological or other special interest, which is reserved and managed for purposes of conservation and to provide special opportunities for study or research. They may be designated by government institutions in some countries, or by private landowners, such as charities and research institutions. Nature reserves fall into different IUCN categories depending on the level of protection afforded by local laws. Normally it is more strictly protected than a nature park. Various jurisdictions may use other terminology, such as ecological protection area or private protected area in legislation and in official titles of the reserves.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is a national park of the United States that conserves an area of large sand dunes on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley, and an adjacent national preserve in the Sangre de Cristo Range, in south-central Colorado. The park was originally designated Great Sand Dunes National Monument on March 17, 1932, by President Herbert Hoover. The original boundaries protected an area of 35,528 acres. A boundary change and redesignation as a national park and preserve was authorized on November 22, 2000, and then established on September 24, 2004. The park encompasses 107,342 acres while the preserve protects an additional 41,686 acres for a total of 149,028 acres. The recreational visitor total was 527,546 in 2019.
The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (MNTP) is a tallgrass prairie reserve and is preserved as United States National Grassland operated by the United States Forest Service. The first national tallgrass prairie ever designated in the United States and the largest conservation site in the Chicago Wilderness region, it is located on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant between the towns of Elwood, Manhattan and Wilmington in northeastern Illinois. Since 2015, it has hosted a conservation herd of American bison to study their interaction with prairie restoration and conservation.
Rome Sand Plains is a 15,000-acre (61 km2) pine barrens about five miles (8.0 km) west of the city center of Rome in Oneida County in central New York. It consists of a mosaic of sand dunes rising about 50 feet (15 m) above low peat bogs that lie between the dunes. The barrens are covered with mixed northern hardwood forests, meadows, and wetlands. About 4,000 acres (16 km2) are protected in conservation preserves. Pine barrens are typical of seacoasts; the Rome Sand Plains is one of only a handful of inland pine barrens remaining in the United States. A second inland pine barrens, the Albany Pine Bush, is also found in New York, located north and west of state's capital Albany.
The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (WPC) is a private nonprofit conservation organization founded in 1932 and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. WPC has contributed land to 12 state parks and conserved more than a quarter million acres of natural lands. The Conservancy plants and maintains more than 132 gardens in 20 Western Pennsylvania counties, as well as planting thousands of trees through its community forestry program. WPC has protected or restored more than 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of rivers and streams. In 1963, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. entrusted Frank Lloyd Wright's masterwork Fallingwater to the Conservancy. The house was called the most important building of the 20th century by the American Institute of Architects.
Forest management is a branch of forestry concerned with overall administrative, legal, economic, and social aspects, as well as scientific and technical aspects, such as silviculture, forest protection, and forest regulation. This includes management for timber, aesthetics, recreation, urban values, water, wildlife, inland and nearshore fisheries, wood products, plant genetic resources, and other forest resource values. Management objectives can be for conservation, utilisation, or a mixture of the two. Techniques include timber extraction, planting and replanting of different species, building and maintenance of roads and pathways through forests, and preventing fire.
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is a sustainability organization operating in the U.S. and Canada that works across four pillars: standards, conservation, community, and education. SFI was founded in 1994 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA). SFI is the world's largest single forest certification standard by area. SFI is headquartered in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.
Conserving Carolina is a non-profit conservation organization working to preserve water and land resources in Western North Carolina. Conserving Carolina was created in July 2017, from a merger of two previously separate organizations, Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy and Pacolet Area Conservancy. The combined organization maintains a primary office in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and a regional office in Columbus, North Carolina.
Forterra, based in Seattle, Washington, US, is the state of Washington's largest land conservation, stewardship and community building organization dedicated solely to the region.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is a private, non-profit, charitable nature conservation and restoration organisation based in Canada. Since its founding in 1962, the organisation and its partners have protected 15,000,000 hectares of land and water across Canada, which includes the natural habitat of more than a quarter of the country’s endangered species. With offices in each province, NCC works at a local level with interested parties and partners to secure parcels of land.
Whatcom Land Trust is a non-profit organization based out of Bellingham, Washington that works to preserve and protect wildlife habitat, scenic, agricultural and open space lands in Whatcom County. The mission of Whatcom Land Trust is to preserve land for future generations and to promote land stewardship.
Forest restoration is defined as "actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest", i.e. the end-stage of natural forest succession. Climax forests are relatively stable ecosystems that have developed the maximum biomass, structural complexity and species diversity that are possible within the limits imposed by climate and soil and without continued disturbance from humans. Climax forest is therefore the target ecosystem, which defines the ultimate aim of forest restoration. Since climate is a major factor that determines climax forest composition, global climate change may result in changing restoration aims. Additionally, the potential impacts of climate change on restoration goals must be taken into account, as changes in temperature and precipitation patterns may alter the composition and distribution of climax forests.
Sand to Snow National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located in San Bernardino County and northern Riverside County, Southern California.
Pacific Forest Trust is an accredited non-profit conservation land trust that advances forest conservation and stewardship solutions. Its mission is to sustain America's forests for their public benefits of wood, water, wildlife, and people's wellbeing, in cooperation with landowners and communities.
The Wyss Foundation is a charitable organization based in Washington, D.C. Founded by philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, it was established in 1998. The foundation has provided funding to conservation, environmental journalism, education, museums, and progressive political advocacy.
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