• Home
  • How We Work
  • Where We Work
  • News Room
  • About Us
  • My Nature Page

The Nature Conservancy in Africa - Conservation in Africa

The Nature Conservancy in Asia Pacific - Conservation in Asia-Pacific

The Nature Conservancy in the Caribbean - Conservation in the Caribbean

The Nature Conservancy in Central America - Conservation in Central America

The Nature Conservancy in North America - Conservation in North America

The Nature Conservancy in the United States - Conservation in the United States

The Nature Conservancy in South America - Conservation in South America

Nature's Keepers:
An Interview with N.H. Author Bill Birchard

 

 


Excerpt from Chapter 3:
"Mission for Life"

When Robert E. Jenkins Jr. joined the Nature Conservancy in August 1970, he walked into an office with a simple motto stenciled on the door: "Land Preservation Through Private Action." On his first day at the 1800 North Kent Street high-rise in Arlington, Virginia, his boss, President Thomas W. Richards, gave him a simple job description to match the motto: improve the scientific significance of land-preservation projects.

Jenkins came well qualified to do Richards's bidding. The top candidate in a field of forty-seven applicants, Jenkins wielded an encyclopedic knowledge of biology, ecology, and natural history. He'd taken his Ph.D. at Harvard a year earlier, student of the celebrated evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and ecologist Edward O. Wilson. He had leadership skills to match. He'd helped found Zero Population Growth in Massachusetts, and on Earth Day in April 1970, he personally spoke out on population control-giving seven speeches in one day.

But Jenkins, a big, burly former Rutgers football player with a broad forehead and red beard, quickly found that Richards's charge was not so simple. He would soon learn the organization was guided by a mission that had drifted since the days when George Fell and Richard Goodwin presided. While the conservation ship once had orders to sail along a precise bearing, it now had the habit of sailing whichever way the winds of deal making blew.

Bill Birchard

Bill Birchard, author of Nature's Keepers.
Photo © Eric Aldrich

 

The Nature Conservancy, and the people whose passions have made it successful, is the topic of a new book by New Hampshire author Bill Birchard.

Nature’s Keepers: The Remarkable Story of How The Nature Conservancy Became the Largest Environmental Organization in the World, examines the life and work of nine individuals who’ve made a lasting impact not only on the Conservancy, but on conservation. With their quirks, their mistakes, their drive and their commitment, these individuals have stretched the envelope of what is possible for conserving biodiversity, influencing not just the Conservancy but also other organizations.

Incorporated in 1951 by a small circle of concerned ecologists, the Nature Conservancy has grown financially into the world’s largest environmental organization. In “Nature’s Keepers” Birchard goes inside the workings of the Nature Conservancy to reveal the leadership that has allowed the organization to weather obstacles and confront crises to become what it is today — with more than $3.7 billion in assets and annual revenue of $800 million and one million members — up from 500,000 in 1990.

Birchard, who lives in Amherst, N.H., is a freelance writer who focuses on management for the business realm. He has written about leadership, ethics, governance, globalization, finance, corporate citizenship, strategic planning, quality management, corporate culture change, R&D, environmental management, and many other topics. His work has appeared in Chief Executive, CFO, Fast Company, Strategy & Business, Tomorrow, and other magazines. A writer for more than 25 years, he was formerly editor for six years of Enterprise, a business magazine published by Digital Equipment Corporation.

For Nature’s Keepers, Birchard conducted about 225 interviews with people inside and outside the Conservancy. He reviewed thousands of documents, from letters and white papers to emails and articles.

What prompted you to write this book?

I wrote the book for a personal reason. I was trying to combine my interest in management and my interest in conservation. I started out working for the Appalachian TrailConference in West Virginia and have had an interest in conservation since the 1970s. At the time I started, interestingly, Pat Noonan, was the president of the Conservancy through the 1970s, and even then he was the role model for nonprofit management for many nonprofit executive directors in the Washington area, including the executive directors of the Appalachian Trail Conference. So I had heard about the Conservancy even that far back.

Fast forward to today. I was trying to combine those two interests, so I said, why not look at the Conservancy, which was still considered a role model for management, and look at what it does right and present that as a story. And this book is the result.

As you did your research, what were the biggest surprises?

The big surprise, which I think would interest a lot of readers, is that the businesslike approach to the Conservancy dates back to the founders’ era.

There was a guy named Alexander Adams who was a PR guy for Mellon Bank. He became very active in the Conservancy in 1960 and in 1964 he authored a report criticizing a lot of the Conservancy’s operating practices, the way it got publicity, the way it raised funds, and so on. And he pushed very hard for the Conservancy to become very businesslike. And the surprise to me was that it dated back that far – that the conservationists who started this organization, the scientists dating back to the 1950s, got business people get involved, and the business people sold the scientists on the idea that you have to run this place like managers run a company.

The other thing that I think is a surprise is that all of these managers – who are exemplary people – all had a terrible time at different points in time in their careers at The Nature Conservancy. Every single manager had rough periods, periods when they got it wrong and had to set things straight. I think that’s the story of all of our lives. We’re all out there doing things by trial and error.

Who served as a good example of innovation in the Conservancy?

Kent Wommack (former state director of the Maine chapter) exemplifies the ability to take risks. One of the big risks that the Conservancy has always taken – and this is a theme that runs through the whole book – is in tackling projects that are going to cost more than anybody thinks can be funded and then figuring out how to fund it. The best example from Maine is protecting the St. John River. The St. John was a project where the Conservancy had initially counted on putting in $1 million, with its private partner putting in another $34 million to buy a huge piece of property that International Paper was selling, with the Conservancy protecting some pieces of that land. In the end, the Conservancy was left without any partners in that deal and decided to do the whole $35 million deal itself. And what’s amazing is not only the innovative funding ideas, but the daring. The daring is what allowed the Conservancy to complete that project. The very fact that people had been so bold and dreamed so big inspired enthusiasm in the staff, in the board, in the membership and in the citizenry of Maine to get the money to make this thing happen. That was a common theme running throughout the Conservancy’s history.

What struck you about the personal attributes of these nine people.

I think one thing that runs through the book is people’s passion for conservation -- people’s passion for this mission. A lot of the accomplishments of the Conservancy and in other nonprofit organizations really stem from people’s passion to get the job done.

One of the people best representative of that is Bob Jenkins. Bob Jenkins is a cantankerous guy. He was a real curmudgeon. He didn’t suffer fools well. He told people when he thought they were off base. And he ultimately paid for that. But he worked long hours. He applied himself to the task of figuring out what the Conservancy should be doing. And then he worked for 15 years to establish 50 state natural heritage programs, which have since largely been spun off from the Conservancy. But many people feel that they’re the Conservancy’s greatest legacy, these scientifically based organizations that catalog the communities and species that represent the diversity of life on Earth. The heritage program allowed the Conservancy to go on and protect the things that really counted. That was a phenomenal contribution. And it could only be done by someone who was passionate about making a difference for the environment, for the Earth.

After all of your research and interviews, how would you evaluate the Conservancy overall?

I would say that, since I finished the book, the Conservancy is reasserting its capability in riding ahead of the pack in terms of managing operations, raising money and conserving land. The best example is in how the Conservancy is taking a leadership role in reforming its governance, the way its board works, and the way it presents itself to the public. Three to five years down the line we’ll see how it all pays off, but I expect it will.

“Nature’s Keepers” is published by Jossey-Bass. For more information,
visit natureskeepers.net.