After nearly thirty years with The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick made the decision to step down as president as this issue of the magazine was going to press. The board has asked me to serve as acting president while a search is conducted for his successor.

Steve was a product of The Nature Conservancy as much as The Nature Conservancy is now a product of Steve’s visionary thinking. He began his Nature Conservancy career in California, but toward the end of his tenure as director of that program he began to challenge the organization’s comfortable complacency. With ever-rising acres protected, we rightfully felt good about what we were accomplishing. But Steve questioned whether it was enough.

He led an effort that established Conservation by Design as the leading methodology to unite conservation action around the world. He helped us face the reality that only by working at a much larger scale would we ever hope to approach our mission: to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. And he also made us truly come to grips with the global demands of that mission: “The diversity of life on Earth” exists well beyond the 50 United States. For Steve, to believe in our mission was to think bigger than we had ever allowed ourselves to think before.

Thinking big defines what I believe will be Steve’s greatest legacy to The Nature Conservancy: the development of a measurable goal that—for the first time—allows us to reliably gauge our conservation progress and define the considerable challenges ahead. Simply put: By 2015 The Nature Conservancy will work with others to ensure the effective conservation of places that represent at least 10 percent of every major habitat on Earth.

By first assessing what is already in protective management around the world—no easy task itself (see “Minding the Gap,” Nature Conservancy winter 2006)—we are now retooling and retraining throughout the organization to focus on filling in the gaps. By securing at least 10 percent of our planet’s forests, grasslands, deserts, rivers and marine habitats, we might best ensure that the natural systems that sustain us and our wildlife will endure. This goal requires that we more than double our current level of conservation in the coming decade.

Moving forward, virtually everything you read about here will relate to this goal. In this issue, for example, we offer snapshots in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of efforts to meet our goal for marine habitats, of which currently only one percent is protected. “Turning Turtle” illuminates the catalytic role The Nature Conservancy plays, here to encourage and guide the first community-managed marine protected area in the South Pacific—in a region known as the Coral Triangle, the richest marine environment on Earth. We introduce Philip Kramer, who is leading similar marine efforts in the Caribbean. In both places, The Nature Conservancy and its partners have invested in innovative strategies that can now be rapidly replicated elsewhere to help fill in the gaps in global marine protection. 

Steve recognized the value of hope in a world where inspiration about the state of the natural world is sometimes rare. By measuring our progress and ensuring that our hope is grounded in reality, we are keeping our eyes on the prize—and that prize is a sustainable natural world for us and for generations to come. The Nature Conservancy is now better equipped than ever to inspire and lead this noble endeavor.

Stephanie Meeks
Acting President and CEO
The Nature Conservancy
Winter 2007