Our Virginia: Impact Report 2023

The Nature Conservancy and many of our partners often use a metaphor to explain why we work the way we do—and the why really matters. Picture a three-legged stool. When all three legs are sound, the stool is balanced and provides a safe, stable platform. But what if any one leg is short, or wobbly or breaks? Then the stool and anything (or anyone) on it can topple over.

Similarly, effective conservation depends on three legs: nature, community and economy. Throughout my career, I have been passionate about the intersection of land conservation, sense of community and people’s livelihoods. It’s never been easy to balance all three concerns, but TNC’s commitment to doing the difficult but right thing was in large part what drew me to this organization.

Climate change only makes it more urgent that we rise to the challenge. TNC has some big goals in front of us and a limited time to get there. So, how do we bring together all of our partners, provide leadership in a respectful way, and engage the communities in which we work? And thinking beyond just our traditional allies, how do we encourage all the voices that should be heard to join us and help move us forward? While science guides where we work and what we need to achieve, grappling with questions like these reminds us why we must prevail.

We can’t get where we need to go alone. But, of course, we never have. From the Appalachians to the Atlantic, every conservation success has depended on the power of partnership. If, as is often said, the best predictor of the future is past performance, then I hope you can be as optimistic as I am about our ability to work together when it matters most and effect the change we need.

This report highlights just a few of the many people who are agents of that change across Virginia and beyond. As a TNC supporter, you, too, are forging a better future for nature and people. Your contribution is an investment in all three legs—nature, community and economy—that sustain life today and for future generations. We are deeply grateful for your commitment to conservation!

Nature was in short supply around Jeff Wright’s childhood home in downtown Philadelphia. Wright’s father, too, had been a city kid, but his wartime experience had inspired a profound appreciation for forests. “My father was part of an air crew shot down over France in World War II and hidden by the French underground in a forest,” Wright says. “The forest hid them, fed them and provided them solace.”

Wright recalls frequent family getaways to parks, until, around the time he was in third grade, they moved into a house in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. “That was a kind of revelation for me,” he says. “We actually had trees and nature for the first time rather than visiting it in parks.”

Wright’s love for the natural world deepened during his own military service. Fresh out of college ROTC, he anticipated a two-year active duty assignment in the Army. Instead, a nearly 30-year career took him to some 50 countries. Along with “places of wonder and beauty,” Wright also witnessed rampant pollution, habitat degradation and deforestation in the former Soviet Union, Asia and the Americas.

Those experiences would strengthen his resolve that, for the benefit of humankind, “something had to be done.” Not one to leave a job to others, Wright started volunteering for stewardship workdays, including Jeff Wright’s Passion for Connecting People to Nature Nature Conservancy events, and citizen science projects during his last decade in government service and then his nearly two decades as an executive in industry. The rest is far from history. For almost as long as he spent in the Army, Wright has served TNC in Virginia as a leadership volunteer, financial supporter and self-described “thorn in the side”—an outspoken advocate for tackling difficult challenges.

Having grown up in an urban apartment and playing on a concrete schoolyard, Wright is passionate about providing public access to parks and preserves. He sees reaching out to communities who otherwise lack ready access to nature as “a tremendous challenge,” but a necessary one for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. “Wherever we do that, I think we have great success,” he says.

At TNC’s Voorhees Nature Preserve on the Rappahannock River, for example, Wright has invested not only many hours of “sweat equity” into the trail system, but he and his wife, Kathy, also helped TNC fund a popular new public access point that opened in 2020. And as a long-time member and current president of Friends of Dragon Run, he has helped countless hikers and kayakers explore one of the Chesapeake Bay’s most scenic and ecologically important tributaries while preserving, protecting and encouraging the wise use of this amazing watershed.

“Once you see some of those couple-hundred-yearold trees, see your first eagle fly by and see something as wonderful as a box turtle lumbering across a TNC trail, I think you’re hooked,” Wright says. “It makes an impression for life on a child, but, more importantly, it makes a big impact on the adults: They vote, they donate, they make policy changes.”

Wright is one such changemaker, and, for a former military man, he offers an interesting twist on the definition of a hero. Rather than someone willing to run toward danger, Wright says, “I’m looking for people who’ll run toward nature.” By any measure, Jeff Wright is one conservation hero whom we’re fortunate to serve alongside.