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Coachella Valley
© Harold E. Malde
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Coachella Valley:
Negotiating Compromise
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard as threatened, the stage was set for a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between environmentalists and developers. The outcome, which benefited all concerned-including the lizard-is conservation history-making at its best. First, the Conservancy and its partners stipulated that anyone hoping to develop part of the valley would be required to pay $600 per acre to help pay for the purchase of land within the new preserve. These mitigation fees generated millions of dollars for the sanctuary. The Conservancy then designed the first Habitat Conservation Plan, which pinpointed the ecological processes that had to be preserved to save the lizard. (And said lizard is very picky about the kind of sand it requires.) Taking six years to develop, the plan resulted in a 13,000-acre wildlife haven and two smaller protected areas.
Block Island:
A Network of Local Partners
Several decades ago, the residents of Rhode Island's Block Island initiated an ambitious land preservation program for their 7-mile-long, 5-mile-wide island, home to a roster of rare species and a critical stopover site for migratory birds. Today, with about 2,300 acres saved and more protection projects on the horizon, the island is a model for what is possible through multipartner, collaborative conservation.
When the Conservancy stepped in to help in 1981, "it began to learn a great deal about being a good partner by working with effective, well-established conservationists in this small island community," says Conservancy Vice President Dennis Wolkoff. "We've worked with an array of groups, citizens and agencies there, including the local school, the Block Island Conservancy, the town government, affordable housing interests, the Block Island Land Trust, the New England and Mystic Aquariums, Rhode Island Audubon and many colleges and universities. Block Island has taught us that real partners can help us meet our own goals, just as we can assist with the community's often broader agenda."
Mashomack:
The Art of the Deal
In 1980 the family-owned company that held 2,000 acres on the southern third of Shelter Island, off the tip of New York's Long Island, was interested in donating the property, but it wanted to see some cash for the rest of its holdings. Through a creative and unconventional arrangement, the Conservancy bought all of the company's assets, which included several brownstones in New York, warehouses in Miami and a number of oil and gas wells, and then sold those properties to help cover acquisition costs for its new preserve.
Lying only 100 miles from New York City, Mashomack Preserve's 2,039 acres feature oak, hickory and beech woodlands dotted with freshwater swamps, salt marshes and brackish coastal ponds. Its 22 miles of trails wind through a bird-watcher's paradise.
Braulio Carrillo National Park:
Creative Global Financing
In the 1980s the Conservancy helped develop an innovative, highly effective conservation tool in Latin America and the Caribbean: "debt-for-nature swaps." Some of the planet's biologically richest nations are also among the most indebted. As many of those debts have little chance of being fully repaid, why not allow debtor nations to invest in conservation in return for reductions in their external debt? Such swaps can convert a debtor country's unpaid loans into funds for conservation.
The Conservancy first tested this tool in 1987, arranging for Fleet National Bank of Rhode Island to donate $254,000 in Costa Rican debt titles to benefit the nation's Braulio Carrillo National Park, a land of species-rich, rugged mountainous rain forests in the Cordillera Volcanica Central Biosphere Reserve.
Ramsey Canyon:
Adding Water to the Mix
Famed for its 14 species of hummingbirds, Ramsey Canyon Preserve is also the site of a lesser known though precedent-setting event. Western water law had traditionally required that water appropriated from a stream be put to "beneficial use," typically meaning that the water must be diverted from the stream. "When the Conservancy's request for the right to a certain amount of water and the right to leave the water in the stream was approved in 1983, the organization became the first private entity in the West to be granted 'instream flow rights,' " says Conservancy water-rights attorney Robert Wigington. The decision also marked Arizona's first legal recognition of the right to appropriate water for wildlife and recreational purposes without diverting it from its source. The event fueled the Conservancy's development of a far-reaching protection method: securing water rights to safeguard endangered aquatic systems throughout the West.
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Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
© Tom Klare
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Tallgrass Prairie Preserve:
Restoring an Ecosystem
After 12 years and a current herd of some 1,200 bison, the Conservancy is realizing its dream to re-create a fully functioning tallgrass prairie, a valid representative of what was once our nation's grandest ecosystem. It is the largest restoration effort the Conservancy has ever undertaken and the first of an actual ecosystem. In 1989 the Conservancy bought the 32,000-acre Barnard Ranch, a grassland at the heart of Oklahoma's Osage Hills, to establish the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. It then launched its venture to restore a genuine presettlement prairie. After removing the cattle and resting the grassland, the Conservancy began reintroducing the key elements that make tallgrass thrive: fire and bison. Though not all of the preserve is once again true tallgrass-and the Conservancy aims for an eventual herd of 3,200 bison-this first-of-its-kind experiment is well on its way toward success.
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