Mark writes:

> Recently, I gave a little plug to the Nature Conservancy as a "libertarian
>  way" to maintain the environment.  A reader sent me a private note that led
>  me to do some research on the methods of the group.  It turns out that they
>  don't always hold onto the land they buy.  They sell $millions of land to
>  governments and other groups thus invalidating my case.  Admittedly, some
of
>  the references I found have a political axe to grind (like
>  http://www.undueinfluence.com/nature_conservancy.htm) but their own web
site
>  does confirm some of the information I found.  If anyone knows of another
>  group who sticks to the notion that I thought the Conservancy had, I would
>  be grateful to hear of it.

Lordy.

In all of the world, the Nature Conservancy has to be one of the really good
guys. Land swapping in the name of conservancy goes on all of the time, even
within the government. What was once USFS land sometimes becomes BLM land,
and what was once BLM land is sold to private interests in return for more
ecologically sensitive land.

The Gray Ranch story of SW New Mexico is as good an example as any, and one
in which Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were briefly involved. The Nature
Conservancy bought the 300,000 acre Gray Ranch in 1993, after a great deal of
controversy, and then later resold it to the Animas Foundation, a foundation
set up to combine that property with several adjacent properties, creating an
even larger area set aside in perpetuity to prevent its subdivision or
resource exploitation.

A number of local universities (U of A, UNM, NMSU) are now all partners in
the management of the land, including a group of excellent wildlife
biologists who are now members of the Malpai ("badland") Group, including
David Western, who was most recently head of the Kenya Wildlife Service.

For more information, see:

     http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/responses/malpai/

As for the manner the Nature Conservancy does its business, see the story of
the purchase of the Gray Ranch in:

     http://www.hcn.org/1993/feb22/dir/lead.html

The story is long but worth reading.

Purchasing large tracts of land is always a very controversial business and
almost everyone has some sort of agenda for the land. Buying and selling
large tracts, as quietly as possible, has always been part and parcel of the
Nature Conservancy's mode of operation. The intention is constantly "trade
up," protecting increasingly larger and larger tracts of ecologically
sensitive areas.

But to answer your question about finding another group, Conservation
International is another exceptionally worthy group, but it too goes about
its business as quiety as possible. I've always been impressed with the
notion that most movie actors are empty vessels, having virtually no
personality or intelligence of their own and cannot form a coherent sentence
of their own if it weren't written for them. But that's not true of Harrison
Ford. I'm greatly impressed with his intelligence, his acumen and his
knowledge of conservation issues.

Ford has been on the board of CI for a decade and has been very actively
involved in a very necessary project: building protected corridors from
Canada to South America. With the effects of global warming only expected to
increase over the next several decades, the notion of fixed preserves is
becoming much less useful than in the past. The biological diversity that the
preserves were meant to protect will move with the climate change, thus the
necessity of providing continuous strips of protected land running vertically
through the two continents. Again, just as with the TNC, this land for this
project is being bought in large chunks and is often horse traded until the
corridors can be completed. If you get a chance to listen to Harrison Ford
talk about the project, take it. You will be impressed.

Wirt Atmar

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