Trust Funds: Public Support for Conservation

The mid-eighties saw the creation of one of our state’s most valuable conservation tools: the Natural Heritage Trust Fund. Set up by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1987, the fund was established as a source for state agencies to acquire or otherwise protect natural lands.

What this meant for the Conservancy, which worked hard behind the scenes to establish the fund, was that collaborative efforts with state agencies now had a dedicated source of money to draw from, so the Conservancy could invest in a project with the knowledge that, at some future time, the State would have access to the necessary funds to ultimately acquire and manage the protected land.

The Natural Heritage Trust Fund was followed in the mid-nineties by two more funding sources, the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and the Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Together these three funds provide more than 100 million dollars annually for the preservation of North Carolina’s wild lands and waters.

From its inception, The Nature Conservancy has worked with willing partners to achieve its conservation objectives, and the North Carolina Chapter had worked many times with state agencies before creation of the Natural Heritage Trust Fund. But the fund was a turning point, empowering both parties to work in concert, aggressively seeking out conservation opportunities. In a sense, the fund put the Conservancy in the role of middleman, using its privately capital to purchase and “hold” conservation land until the State could allocate the necessary dollars to permanently protect it. The Conservancy continues to proudly play this role in North Carolina.

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