The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy developed out of a scholarly organization initially known as the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The ESA was founded in 1915, and later formed a Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study, headed by Victor Shelford. The primary aim of Shelford was to find areas of land that would be beneficial for long-term research. By the 1930s, Shelford and his colleagues such as Aldo Leopold increasingly sought to advocate for conservation. The divide in viewpoints regarding scholarship or advocacy led the Society to dissolve the committee and in 1946, Shelford and his colleagues formed the Ecologists' Union. The latter group eventually took the name "The Nature Conservancy", in emulation of the British agency of that name, which pursued a mission of conserving open space and wildlife preserves. The Nature Conservancy was incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization on October 22, 1951.

As the organization grew, the organization focused largely on buying as much land as possible in the name of conservation with little scientific research conducted on land before being purchased. Patrick Noonan served as president from 1973 to 1980 and spearheaded major land acquisitions, fundraising and decentralized growth of state programs. In 1970 the organization hired its first staff scientist, Robert E. Jenkins Jr., who helped the organization refocus its mission to conserving natural diversity. With Noonan's support, in 1974 Jenkins began to partner with state governments to develop state-by-state inventories which assembled and stored data on the "elements" of nature (e.g. rare species and natural communities) and on "element occurrences" (the specific locations where they occur), which later morphed into the Natural Heritage Network, a network of state natural heritage programs.

Sexual harassment investigation

After service as the Nature Conservancy's president for one year, Brian McPeek resigned on May 31, 2019, after a report on an internal investigation of sexual harassment was revealed by Politico. Two other senior executives were ultimately dismissed based on its findings. On June 7, 2019, Mark Tercek, CEO since 2008, announced his resignation following the resignation of McPeek. On June 10, Luis Solorzano, executive director of the Nature Conservancy's Florida-based Caribbean chapter, became the fifth senior official to depart the organization. On June 11, the Nature Conservancy's board chairman Thomas J. Tierney announced that board member and former US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell would serve as interim CEO, effective September 2019.

Plant a Billion Trees campaign

The Nature Conservancy's "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign is an effort to plant one billion trees across the globe in forests with the greatest need and has been operating since 2008 to plant trees in Brazil, China, Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Mexico, and the United States. As part of the overall campaign, the Nature Conservancy pledged to plant 25 million trees as part of the launch of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)'s Billion Tree Campaign. This campaign encourages individuals and organizations to plant their own trees around the world and record this action on the website as a tally. Its "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign in Brazil aims to restore Brazil's Atlantic Forest by planting native trees on 2.5 million acres (10,000 km2) that have been deforested. The Plant a Billion Trees campaign has also been identified as a tool to help slow climate change with forest restoration being an effective way to help regulate emissions in the atmosphere and stabilize global climate.

Operations

The Nature Conservancy has over one million members across the world as of 2021. As of 2014, it was the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas.

Big business ties

The Nature Conservancy has ties to many large companies, including those in the oil, gas, mining, chemical and agricultural industries. As of 2016, its board of directors included the retired chairman of Duke Energy, and executives from Merck, HP, Google and several financial industry groups. It also has a Business Council which it describes as a consultative forum that includes Bank of America, BP America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Mills, Royal Dutch Shell, and Starbucks. The organization faced criticism in 2010 from supporters for its refusal to cut ties with BP after the Gulf oil spill.

In 2020, Bloomberg published an article claiming that some of the companies (such as JPMorgan Chase, Disney, and BlackRock) that purchase carbon credits from the Nature Conservancy were purchasing carbon credits for forests that did not need protection. In 2021, the Nature Conservancy partnered with Amazon to compensate local farmers for restoring and protecting rainforests in Para, Brazil. In 2022, a group of 158 conservation, environmental, and social justice non-profit organizations signed an open letter to the Conservancy's CEO, Jennifer Morris, charging that the Nature Conservancy was overly supportive of logging interests and the use of wood products as a natural climate solution. TNC is a member of the Forest Climate Working Group alongside wood product companies like Weyerhaeuser and Enviva, and other conservation organizations like the Trust for Public Land and American Forests.