OPINION/COMMENTARY

Forever Is A Long Time

For awhile there it looked like The Nature Conservancy had plans to buy up all the land in this country. But they realized that even they didn't have quite that much money. Besides, the more land they bought the more they had to pay to take care of it. According to writer Tom Knudson, "from 1990 to 2000, administrative overhead at the Conservancy jumped from $14.8 million to $40.2 million -- up 170 percent. Its fund-raising bill, which includes membership solicitations, went from $8.8 million to $45.7 million, up 420 percent." If The Nature Conservancy wants to brag half a century from now about the same kind of growth it achieved in its first fifty years, then they had to change their business model. This was clear to TNC's new president Steve McCormick, a lawyer and former head of the California arm of TNC. While he ran the Nature Conservancy in California, McCormick changed that group's focus from trying to buy up all the land to merely being able to control it. His first year at the national organization has been spent trying to instill that same philosophy. McCormick has said that "nature preserves are not sufficient to heal an ailing planet. Our mission speaks to preserving biological diversity, not creating nature preserves. Land acquisition alone will not enable us to work at the scale we have to work at." To McCormick the problem was clear: Almost half of the group's income was going toward taking care of properties they already owned, and as they purchased more land there would be less and less money left over to satiate their desire for more real estate. "Custodial maintenance is an Achilles' heel for us," McCormick said. McCormick now wants to shed some Nature Conservancy property by selling it or gifting it so the group can turn their efforts to protecting much larger regions of this country and the world. To do this The Nature Conservancy doesn't have to own all the land, merely control it. Why buy the land when you can effectively control it through conservation easements?....

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