A New Vision for Conservation

At TCF we like to say that “land sustains us.” Land was America’s first natural resource. And because we see the link between land and American progress, we believe that conservation will advance us. What we need now is a new kind of environmentalism, defined not by stopping things but by advancing solutions that work.    

The Conservation Fund does things differently. We work at the intersection of business and the environment, balancing economic progress and conservation. Let’s look at one example that is succeeding.   

For much of the last century, this nation’s large, intact working forests — forests that support the harvesting of trees — were owned by companies to make paper and lumber products. That stable situation was upended about 25 years ago when these large companies began to sell their land into a rapidly expanding real estate market.   

In a short amount of time, more than 90 million acres of land changed hands. It was the largest transfer of private lands in the history of the United States, and 20 million acres was lost to development. Almost none were preserved as working forests.     

The good news was that 70 million acres of large, intact working forests were still large, intact working forests. The bad news was that these assets were held in 10-year funds and at the end of the investment period, the forests were put back on the market with many of the acres sold off for development. As a result, over the next 10 years, another 20 million acres of forest were lost.   

So, American forestland went from 90 million to 70 million to 50 million, and projections are that we will continue to lose about a million acres a year for the next decade. This loss of forests remains the greatest land conservation challenge in the country today. These are the lands that provide us with clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, habitat that supports wildlife and hunting and fishing, and more than 2 million jobs — jobs that cannot be exported overseas.   

Given TCF’s proven track record of over 4,000 successful land conservation transactions, we decided to do something about this. With the support of the Richard King Mellon Foundation, we designed an entirely new approach to conservation.  

We aggregate a lot of money quickly so that the most important forests can be acquired when they come on the market.  We operate large working forests as economic units, supporting jobs in the woods and in the mills. We ensure the permanent operation of these forests through agreements that prevent fragmentation and allow sustainable harvesting in perpetuity. And finally, we craft an exit from our investments so that we earn back our capital and redeploy it when the next high-conservation-value forest comes on the market.    

We have now deployed more than $1 billion, and in June we announced that we have protected more than 1 million acres of high-conservation-value forests across 21 states. These forests generate more than $830 million in annual economic impact, store more than 250 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, support more than 7,500 jobs and protect more than 2,500 miles of streams.   

This is conservation advancing America — solving for great challenges like the loss of habitat and biodiversity, the protection of safe drinking water and the vitality of rural economies. This is about taking risks and saying YES; focusing not on what conservation can prevent, but what it can “do.”  

We believe this is a framework for the entire environmental movement for the next century. Our challenge to both business and environmentalism is to work together to create long-term, sustainable solutions to our nation’s problems. Business goals and environmental objectives aren’t incompatible, they’re inextricable. Environmentalism without economic progress has no engine. And economic progress that isn’t environmentally sustainable has no future.   

It’s time for us to see that the only way forward is by working together.