The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is an international environmental organization based in Arlington, Virginia, United States. As of 2021, it operates through branches or local groups in 79 countries and territories, as well as in every state across the United States.

Founded in 1951, the Nature Conservancy has more than one million members worldwide (as of 2021). Throughout its history, it has protected over 119 million acres (48 million hectares) of land. As of 2014, it was the largest environmental nonprofit group in the Americas based on money and resources.

History

The Nature Conservancy began as a group of scientists known as the Ecological Society of America (ESA), which was created in 1915. The ESA formed a committee called the Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study, led by Victor Shelford. Shelford’s goal was to find land suitable for long-term research. By the 1930s, Shelford and others, including Aldo Leopold, began to support conservation efforts. A disagreement between the group about focusing on research or conservation led the ESA to end the committee. In 1946, Shelford and his colleagues created a new group called the Ecologists’ Union. This group later changed its name to "The Nature Conservancy," inspired by a similar British organization that worked to protect open spaces and wildlife. The Nature Conservancy became a non-profit organization in the United States on October 22, 1951.

As the organization grew, it focused on buying land for conservation, with less emphasis on scientific research before purchases. Patrick Noonan led the group from 1973 to 1980 and helped expand land purchases, fundraising, and state programs. In 1970, the organization hired its first staff scientist, Robert E. Jenkins Jr., who helped shift the group’s focus to protecting natural diversity. With Noonan’s support, Jenkins started working with state governments in 1974 to create state-by-state records about natural elements, such as rare species and ecosystems, and their locations. These efforts later became the Natural Heritage Network, a system of state programs that track and store information about nature.

Project sites

The Nature Conservancy works to protect nature in many places around the world, including North America, Central America, South America, Africa, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, and Asia.

The Nature Conservancy and its partner, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, are working to stop deforestation on private lands near the 1.8 million-acre (7,300 km²) Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, which is located along the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Together, they helped protect 370,000 acres (1,500 km²) of tropical forest in Calakmul. In another project, the Nature Conservancy is helping to protect wildlife homes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

In 2007, the Nature Conservancy bought 161,000 acres (650 km²) of forestland in New York from Finch Paper Holdings LLC for $110 million. This was the largest land purchase the organization made in that state. In June 2008, the Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land agreed to buy about 320,000 acres (1,300 km²) of forestland in western Montana from Plum Creek Timber Company for $510 million. This project, called the Montana Legacy Project, helps keep forests managed for timber use, protects clean water and wildlife homes, and ensures public access for activities like fishing, hiking, and hunting. In 2015, the Nature Conservancy purchased 165,073 acres (668.03 km²) of forests, rivers, and wildlife habitat in Washington and Montana from Plum Creek. This land includes areas in the Yakima River Headwaters in Washington and the Lower Blackfoot River Watershed in Montana.

Nature United is the Canadian branch of the Nature Conservancy. It was created as a Canadian charity in 2014 and continues conservation work that has taken place in Canada for many years. Based in Toronto, the organization has staff working across the country. Nature United supports Indigenous leadership, helps communities develop in ways that protect the environment, and works on large-scale conservation projects in places like the Great Bear Rainforest, Clayoquot Sound, the Northwest Territories, and northern Manitoba.

In December 2015, the Nature Conservancy completed the first debt swap in Seychelles to help protect the ocean. This agreement increased the country’s protected marine areas from less than 1% to more than 30%, including the creation of the second-largest Marine Protected Area in the Western Indian Ocean. The deal involved the Seychelles Ministry of Finance, support from countries that hold Seychelles’ debt, such as France, and funding from private groups, including the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.

The Nature Conservancy’s impact investing group, called NatureVest, helped organize the funding for this effort. NatureVest was started in 2014 with support from JPMorgan Chase. Its goal is to use at least $1 billion in investments to achieve measurable conservation results over three years. For their work on the Seychelles debt swap, the Nature Conservancy and JPMorgan Chase received the FT/ITC Transformational Business Award for Achievement in Transformational Finance. This award is given by the Financial Times and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to recognize innovative, commercially viable solutions to development challenges.

Plant a Billion Trees campaign

The Nature Conservancy's "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign works to plant one billion trees in forests that need them most. It has been active since 2008 and has planted trees in Brazil, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, and the United States. As part of this effort, the Nature Conservancy promised to plant 25 million trees when the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) started its Billion Tree Campaign. This campaign invites people and groups worldwide to plant trees and report these actions on a website to track progress. In Brazil, the "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign focuses on restoring the Atlantic Forest by planting native trees on 2.5 million acres (10,000 km²) of land that has been cut down.

The "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign is also used to help reduce climate change. Restoring forests is a proven way to manage emissions in the air and keep the Earth's climate stable.

Operations

The Nature Conservancy has more than one million members worldwide as of 2021. In 2014, it was the largest environmental non-profit organization in the Americas based on its assets and income.

The Nature Conservancy has connections with many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical, and agricultural industries. In 2016, its board of directors included the retired chairman of Duke Energy and executives from Merck, HP, Google, and several financial industry groups. The organization has a Business Council, which it describes as a group that provides advice. This group includes companies such as Bank of America, BP America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks. In 2010, supporters criticized the organization for not ending its relationship with BP after the Gulf oil spill.

Writer and activist Naomi Klein strongly criticized the Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas and for continuing to work with fossil fuel companies. The Nature Conservancy explained that it had no choice because of a lease agreement it signed years earlier with an oil and gas company, which it later regretted.

In 2020, Bloomberg reported that some companies, like JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and BlackRock, bought carbon credits from the Nature Conservancy for forests that did not need protection.

In 2021, the Nature Conservancy partnered with Amazon to help local farmers in Para, Brazil, restore and protect rainforests.

In 2022, 158 conservation, environmental, and social justice non-profit organizations sent an open letter to the Conservancy’s CEO, Jennifer Morris, accusing the organization of being too supportive of logging interests and the use of wood products as a climate solution. The Nature Conservancy is part of the Forest Climate Working Group, which includes wood product companies like Weyerhaeuser and Enviva, as well as other conservation groups like the Trust for Public Land and American Forests.

The Charity Navigator gave the Nature Conservancy a 4-star rating with a score of 96% for the 2022 fiscal year.

Like many large environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund, the Conservancy allows hunting and fishing in its management policies. It does not completely ban these activities but follows state hunting and fishing rules.

The organization publishes The Nature Conservancy magazine (ISSN 1540-2428; six issues per year). It has also appeared in documentaries, including Ocean State: Rhode Island's Wild Coast, a series on WSBE/PBS.

Gallery

• An award given by the Department of the Interior
• An environmental education program called Table Rocks
• A person named Lotus Vermeer working with an animal in the field
• An event called Regional Ocean Challenges held in Australia
• A health check for a fox on Santa Cruz Island
• Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia received a $500,000 environmental grant

Controversies

In 2003, The Washington Post published an investigative series about the Nature Conservancy, claiming the organization had engaged in unethical actions. The Post alleged that the Conservancy repeatedly purchased important land areas with ecological value, added restrictions to limit heavy development, and then sold these properties to supporters and trustees at much lower prices. These sales were part of a program that allowed buyers to build homes while limiting harmful development. Buyers then gave the Conservancy money equal to the discounts they received, which helped them claim tax benefits for charitable donations.

The Nature Conservancy stopped several practices after the articles were published, including these sales, allowing corporations with executives on its board to use its logo, permitting new logging or drilling on its preserves, and offering loans to employees. The organization also began an independent review, which released its final report in 2004. The report called for major changes to ensure the Conservancy met high ethical standards for nonprofit groups.

In 2019, Brian McPeek, who had served as president of the Nature Conservancy for one year, resigned on May 31 after a report about an internal investigation into sexual harassment was published by Politico. Two other senior leaders were later fired based on the report’s findings. On June 7, Mark Tercek, the CEO since 2008, announced his resignation after McPeek left. On June 10, Luis Solorzano, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Florida-based Caribbean chapter, became the fifth senior official to leave the organization. On June 11, Thomas J. Tierney, the board chairman, announced that Sally Jewell, a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and board member, would serve as interim CEO starting in September 2019.