Conservation's Best-Kept Secret

By Jamie Murphy

To eager developers, Big Bend conjured up visions of condos and tennis courts: 64,000 acres of wetlands stretching along 60 miles of the Gulf Coast of Florida. Hardwood hammocks, saw grass, palms, brackish scrub. Teeming with many exotic -- as well as threatened and endangered -- species such as alligators, manatees, green turtles and bald eagles. Probably the largest plot of undeveloped private property left in the East.

Big Bend's owner, Buckeye Cellulose, a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, was asking a steep price. But the coveted land did not end up in the hands of a wealthy developer. It was bought instead by an environmental group, the Nature Conservancy, which in December paid $20 million for the property.

Operating quietly and unknown to most Americans, the conservancy has in the ! past three decades bought hundreds of similarly fragile environments. From its headquarters in Arlington, Va., it now oversees a 2.61 million-acre empire that includes more than 1,000 species of threatened plants and animals. "We have been called the best-kept secret in conservation," says William Blair, TNC's president emeritus. "We are the largest private owner of land sanctuaries in the world, and we are either No. 1 or No. 2 in the amount of money we spend on conservation each year." Says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Frank Dunkle: "The conservancy is all action and no talk. While others have been out preaching conservation, they have been practicing it."

Staffers attribute TNC's success to its philosophy of nonconfrontation. While the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, for example, employ litigation, lobbying and publicity as weapons, TNC prefers to use gentle persuasion -- and cash. "We have very little to do with the activist environmental groups," says David Morine, TNC's head of land acquisitions. "We stay away from all that and get along with everybody." The organization has even extended an olive branch to developers, a group that most environmentalists consider the enemy. "We are not in conflict with developers," says TNC's new president Frank Boren, himself a former real estate executive. "We have worked with them and even lent them money."

That cooperation was recently demonstrated near Palm Springs, Calif. Real estate projects with a potential value of $19 billion were being blocked by environmentalists trying to protect the Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard, an endangered species that inhabits the area. After a series of studies concluded that the reptile could survive if a 13,000-acre preserve were established nearby, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked TNC to help raise the $25 million needed to purchase the tract. Within four years, the organization had rounded up the entire amount. The environmentalists were satisfied, and the developers proceeded with their plans.

All lands managed by the conservancy support some kind of threatened species or ecosystem. To keep track of other critical land parcels that are potential purchases, the organization maintains a state-by-state computerized list. "It is the closest thing we have to a national inventory of endangered flora and fauna," says Blair. "It is much better than anything in the Interior Department." The conservancy will also accept gifts of land, no | matter what their ecological importance. But gift parcels with no ecological value are later resold, a policy that nets the organization about $14 million annually. Most of TNC's property is open to the public for "passive recreation" like hiking and bird watching, but that privilege is sometimes abused. Says Morine: "If we had our druthers, we would just as soon no one came. The general public is not very kind to nature preserves. It's usually beer drinking bumper-to-bumper."

The conservancy grew out of two committees formed in 1917 by the Ecological Society of America, but it was not until 1953 that it began demonstrating its buying power. In that year TNC purchased and preserved 60 acres along the Mianus River Gorge in New York's Westchester county. Since then, it has been on an accelerating spree. Between 1975 and 1985, for example, TNC's assets increased from $97 million to $457 million and its sanctuaries grew in number from 533 to 900. In 1981 the conservancy went international, and now has cooperative programs in ten Central American and South American countries. Major benefactors have included the Richard King Mellon Foundation of Pittsburgh, which over the past decade has contributed $65 million, and 3M Heir Katharine Ordway, who during her lifetime donated $11.4 million. The Goodhill Foundation, set up by Ordway, has chipped in millions more.

The conservancy's ample war chest gives it considerable clout. "We have a revolving fund of $50 million that allows us to be major players in the real estate market," says Blair. "We stand in line like anybody else to buy property, but we can act very quickly. We have often done a million dollars' worth of business on a handshake overnight. We have got phone calls at 2, and at 4 someone is on the way to a land auction." But mere millions may not be enough. America's burgeoning population continues to infringe on fragile environments, and land is becoming more expensive. Says Boren: "We intend to raise a billion dollars by 1995 to save what is worth saving. It's an achievable goal."

With reporting by Patricia Delaney/Washington and Marcia Gauger/Miami