Conservation Powering the Future

The Conservation Fund has worked to protect more than 1 million acres of working forests across the country, and we are moving towards a goal of 5 million in the coming years. We work to quickly buy at-risk forests when they come on the market. We then put conservation easements in place to permanently protect them and ensure they are managed sustainably and never broken apart — forever protecting them as large, intact working forests that create economic vitality and sequester carbon.  

Our planet’s collective carbon-sink is struggling to keep up with emissions, and we need more conserved lands like forests and wetlands to keep pace with the growing energy needs that drive today’s emissions. That is a powerful reason to reinforce our commitment to land conservation and recognize that it’s a tool for advancing both our climate and energy transformation goals.

Our country’s energy transformation is another challenge where land conservation has a significant role to play. The IEA report, along with quite a few other analyses, indicate that our appetite for electricity is being driven by increased demand from things like AI and data centers, crypto currency and other innovations, as well as the shift in legacy industries like transportation from fossil fuel combustion to electrification. We’re shifting from a national energy policy based on things buried underground millions of years ago, to things that will happen on the surface of the earth today and into the future. 

As we move into that future, we must think even more creatively about how land conservation can also advance our nation’s transition to clean energy. Over the next 30 years, more than one million miles of new transmission lines will need to be built to bring clean energy to market. More than 65,000 miles of new pipeline will need to be constructed to transport carbon dioxide to underground storage sites. And millions of acres of land will need to be dedicated to wind farms and solar fields. It’s a big job.  

The scale of the infrastructure we need to advance the transition to a clean energy future is significant, and land conservation is squarely in the middle of it. That’s why The Conservation Fund is dedicated to enabling the clean energy transition by securing and protecting the land that sustains us. We can and must conserve land for conservation and support the build of critical clean energy infrastructure in places where the land can sustain it and where communities support it.  

This is conservation that is advancing America’s future — solving for great challenges like climate mitigation and the energy transformation, as well as 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.  

It’s time to bring a business-like approach to problem-solving, remain clear-eyed about trade-offs, and focus on tangible results. These are the elements that should define conservation in the future. They’re the elements that define how The Conservation Fund practices conservation today.