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49-518: The Nature Conservancy reports that in 2000 it spun off its 85-center Natural Heritage Network "into a new independent organization, the Association for Biodiversity Information (later renamed NatureServe)." NatureServe reports that it was established in 1994 as the Association for Biodiversity Information. In 2001 the IRS approved a name change to NatureServe that was requested in 1999, while maintaining

98-449: A Cook County circuit court to liquidate the entire MacArthur Foundation. He dropped the suit later that year when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. John E. Corbally , the first president of the foundation and later board chairman from 1995 to 2002, was followed in 1989–99 by Adele Simmons , who was the first female dean at Princeton University . Jonathan Fanton , president of American Academy of Arts and Sciences , served as

147-732: 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 includes allowances for hunting and fishing within its management policies. The organization does not totally ban hunting or fishing but defers to state hunting and fishing regulations. The organization publishes The Nature Conservancy magazine ( ISSN   1540-2428 ; six issues per year). In 2003 The Washington Post ran an investigative series about

196-450: A candidate. Nominators, serving confidentially, anonymously and for a limited time, are invited to recommend potential Fellows. Candidates are reviewed by a selection committee whose members also serve confidentially, anonymously and for a limited time. Ultimately, the selection committee makes recommendations to the foundation's board of directors for final approval. The foundation awarded a total of around $ 850,000 in six separate grants to

245-593: 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

294-566: A model for expanding the emerging state network: go to the states and offer to hire and train a staff of biologists, establish an operating center, and, two years later, let the state take over operations. By 1993, the U.S. network consisted of organizations in all fifty states. Programs were formed in Latin American countries in 1982, and the Canadian programs first established in 1988 now extend to all provinces and Yukon Territory. By

343-480: A sizable portion in federal awards for mapping services, wildlife assessments, and other products and services. It also reports $ 186,290 in revenue from general contributions, $ 56,470 in revenue from membership dues, and $ 216,062 in fundraising expenses. Some major contributions are made in the form of grants for specific projects. The MacArthur Foundation reported that they awarded $ 1,191,500 in grants to NatureServe between 2003 and 2013, and NatureServe announced that

392-558: Is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 117 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $ 7.6 billion and provides approximately $ 260 million annually in grants and impact investments. It is based in Chicago , and in 2014 it was the 12th-largest private foundation in the United States. It has awarded more than US$ 8.27 billion since its first grants in 1978. The foundation's stated purpose

441-517: Is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia . As of 2021, it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members globally as of 2021 and has protected more than 119 million acres (48 million ha) of land in its history. As of 2014, it

490-652: 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

539-446: Is not a reward for past accomplishment, but an investment in a person's originality and potential. As of 2015 , MacArthur Fellows receive $ 625,000 each, which is paid out in quarterly installments over five years. The Chicago Foundation for Women was one of the nonprofit organizations to receive a US$ 1 million four-year grant in 2017. No one can apply for the program, and, generally, no one knows whether they are being considered as

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588-599: Is the largest environmental non-profit organization by assets and revenue in the Americas. 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

637-570: Is to support "creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world". MacArthur's grant-making priorities include mitigating climate change , reducing jail populations, decreasing nuclear threats, supporting nonprofit journalism, and funding local needs in its hometown of Chicago. According to the OECD , the foundation's financing for 2019 development increased by 27% to US$ 109 million. The MacArthur Fellows Program , commonly referred to as

686-501: The Conservancy a model of ethical standards for nonprofit organizations. 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 and two other senior executives were ultimately dismissed based on its findings. On June 7, 2019, Mark Tercek , CEO since 2008, announced his resignation following

735-956: The Guatemala–Mexico border . They brokered the protection of 370,000 acres (1,500 km ) of tropical forest in Calakmul . In another program, TNC is working to protect wildlife habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In 2007, the Nature Conservancy made a 161,000-acre (650 km ) purchase of New York forestland from Finch Paper Holdings LLC for $ 110 million, its largest purchase ever in that state. In June 2008, The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land announced they reached an agreement to purchase approximately 320,000 acres (1,300 km ) of western Montana forestland from Plum Creek Timber Company for $ 510 million. The purchase, known as

784-574: The Gulf oil spill . Writer and activist Naomi Klein has strongly criticized The Nature Conservancy for earning money from an oil well on land it controls in Texas and for its continued engagement with fossil fuel companies. The Nature Conservancy responded by arguing that it had no choice, under the terms of a lease it signed years prior with an oil and gas company and later came to regret. In 2020, Bloomberg published an article claiming that some of

833-541: The Montana Legacy Project , is part of an effort to keep these forests in productive timber management and protect the area's clean water and abundant fish and wildlife habitat, while promoting continued public access to these lands for fishing, hiking, hunting and other recreational pursuits. As a follow-on, in 2015 The Nature Conservancy made a $ 134 million transaction to purchase 165,073 acres (668.03 km ) – of forests, rivers and wildlife habitat in

882-721: The Natural Heritage Network , a network of state natural heritage programs. The Nature Conservancy's efforts include conservation in North America , Central America , and South America , Africa , the Pacific Rim , the Caribbean , and Asia . The Nature Conservancy and its conservation partner, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, to halt deforestation on private lands in and around the 1.8 million acre (7,300 km ) Calakmul Biosphere Reserve , along

931-631: The Russian Guild of Film Directors between 2005 and 2014 to support the Stalker Human Rights Film Festival in Moscow . In June 2016, the foundation requested "proposals promising real progress toward solving a critical problem of our time in any field or any location". The winning proposal would receive a $ 100 million grant. Almost 2,000 proposals were submitted. In December 2017, the foundation announced that

980-704: The "genius" award, annually gives $ 800,000 no-strings-attached grants to around two dozen creative individuals in diverse fields "who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits". The foundation's 100&Change competition awards a $ 100 million grant every three years to a single proposal. John D. MacArthur owned Bankers Life and Casualty and other businesses, as well as considerable property holdings in Florida and New York. His wife, Catherine , held positions in many of these companies. Their attorney, William T. Kirby , and Paul Doolen, their chief financial officer, suggested that

1029-586: 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

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1078-828: The Cascade Mountain Range of Washington and in the Blackfoot River Valley in Montana. The Conservancy also acquired this land from Plum Creek, including 47,921 acres (193.93 km ) in the Yakima River Headwaters in Washington and 117,152 acres (474.10 km ) in the Lower Blackfoot River Watershed in Montana. Nature United is the Canadian affiliate of The Nature Conservancy. Nature United

1127-649: The Conservancy transferring its databases, professional staff, and scientific standards and methodology to ABI. In 2001, having grown into its present form, this new, independent nonprofit became known as NatureServe. NatureServe Inc.'s 2011 IRS Form 990 lists total revenue of $ 8,680,216 and total expenses of $ 8,892,007. The corporation's fiscal year 2011 audited financial statement says that "the accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements." It reports "total revenue, gains, and other support" of $ 9,499,301, and "total expenses" of $ 8,913,138. $ 7,932,133 of revenue came from grants and contracts, including

1176-584: 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 . The Charity Navigator gave The Nature Conservancy

1225-703: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation awarded two grants totaling nearly $ 800,000 in 2005. Between 2004 and 2009, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation donated $ 6.63 million, the Nature Conservency donated $ 3.43 million, the Knoblock Family Foundation donated $ 2.38 million, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation donated $ 1.21 million. The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy ( TNC )

1274-482: The IUCN's conservation assessments, and working together on ongoing assessments. NatureServe Explorer is a web-based database provides public access to NatureServe's proprietary information on US and Canadian ecosystems and plant, animal, and fungus species. This includes ranked NatureServe conservation status assessment data on state, national, and global levels, considered a leading classification of imperiled species in

1323-490: The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Financing for this effort was organized by The Nature Conservancy's impact investing unit called NatureVest. NatureVest was created in 2014 with founding sponsorship from JPMorgan Chase with the stated goal of sourcing and putting to work at least $ 1 billion of impact investment capital for measurable conservation outcomes over three years. For their work on

1372-525: The Nature Conservancy with allegations of improper dealing and other improprieties that the Nature Conservancy contested. In part, the Post alleged the Conservancy had, time and again, bought ecologically significant tracts of land, attached some development restrictions and then resold the properties to trustees and supporters at greatly reduced prices. The sales were part of a program that limits intrusive development but generally allows buyers to build homes on

1421-777: The Seychelles debt restructuring , The Nature Conservancy and JPMorgan Chase were given the FT/ITC Transformational Business Award for Achievement in Transformational Finance. The award is given by the Financial Times and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) for ground-breaking, commercially viable solutions to development challenges. The Nature Conservancy's "Plant a Billion Trees" campaign

1470-727: The United States. Infonatura was a nearly identical service providing information on Latin American wildlife and ecosystems. NatureServe maintains the National Vegetation Classification Standard for the United States as well as the International Classification of Ecological Communities, currently focused on the Western Hemisphere. The natural heritage network now supported by NatureServe, began in 1974 with

1519-427: The atmosphere and stabilize global climate. 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. 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

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1568-410: The communities of Charleston County, South Carolina, Minnehaha County, South Dakota; The city and county of San Francisco; and Tulsa County, Oklahoma with $ 5 million in grant funding to create a unique plan to bring together government officials, non-profit partners, and impacted communities members to develop innovative approaches to this issue. MacArthur has awarded $ 3.2 million in support of the work in

1617-515: 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

1666-1092: The creation of the South Carolina Heritage Trust. After working with Patrick Noonan , president of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), to arrange the donation of the 24,000-acre (97 km) Santee Coastal Reserve, Joseph Hudson, chairman of South Carolina ’s Wildlife and Marine Resources Department, wanted to identify other preservation-worthy lands in the state. He provided TNC with initial funding to amass information that could inform conservation and land-use decision-making while accounting for impacts on biodiversity. While establishing that first program, TNC chief scientist Robert Jenkins Jr., chose to focus on biological features in need of conservation, and to use this information to suggest priority sites for protection. Targeted features included both species and natural communities, or elements of natural diversity. Programs in West Virginia , Mississippi , and Oregon followed in 1975. By 1976, TNC had developed

1715-490: The early 1990s, a group of natural heritage program directors began to develop network-wide information products. This effort led to the establishment of an independent nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the products and services of the network. Incorporated in 1994 as the Association for Biodiversity Information (ABI), this membership organization created the framework for network-wide coordination. In 1999, TNC’s natural heritage network and ABI formally joined forces, with

1764-438: The elder MacArthur had an acrimonious relationship, waged a legal battle against the foundation for control of the board of directors. The younger MacArthur sued eight members of the board, accusing them of mismanagement of the foundation funds. These court cases were dismissed by each jurisdiction for lack of merit. In 1984, MacArthur again sued the board of directors including William Kirby, his father's trusted attorney, asking

1813-527: The family create a foundation to be endowed by their vast fortune. When MacArthur died on January 6, 1978, he was worth in excess of a billion dollars. He left 92 percent of his estate to found the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Its first board of directors, per MacArthur's will, also included J. Roderick MacArthur , John's son from his first marriage, two other officers of Bankers Life and Casualty, and radio commentator Paul Harvey . Jonas Salk ,

1862-654: The finalization of the first ever debt swap in Seychelles aimed at ocean conservation. The new protected area increases the country's marine protected waters from less than 1 percent to more than 30 percent including support for the creation of the second largest Marine Protected Area in the Western Indian Ocean. The debt swap deal was made possible through a partnership with the Seychelles Ministry of Finance, support of debt-holding nations including France, and grants from private organizations led by

1911-494: The foundation's next president. Robert Gallucci , formerly dean of Georgetown University 's School of Foreign Service, served as the foundation's fourth president from 2009 to 2014. Gallucci was fired in 2014. Julia Stasch, who formerly served as MacArthur's vice president for U.S. Programs, was named the foundation's president in 2015. Stasch had been chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley . She announced that she would step down in 2019. In March 2019, John Palfrey

1960-421: The inventor of the polio vaccine, later joined the board of directors. The elder MacArthur believed in the free market. However, he did not direct how foundation money was to be spent after he died. MacArthur told the board of directors, "I figured out how to make the money. You fellows will have to figure out how to spend it." Between 1979 and 1981, John's son, an ideological opponent of his father with whom

2009-696: The land. The buyers then gave the Conservancy cash that was roughly equivalent to the amount of the discounts. That allowed the new owners to take significant tax deductions for charitable gifts. The Nature Conservancy suspended a range of practices shortly after the articles ran including these sales, licensing its logo to corporations whose executives sat on the Conservancy's governing board and council, all new logging and other "resource extraction activities" such as oil and gas drilling on its nature preserves, and all new loans to employees. The Conservancy launched an independent review that issued its final report in 2004, calling for sweeping reforms aimed at making

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2058-474: 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

2107-513: The organization's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status granted in July 1995. NatureServe's website declares that it is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax-exempt corporation incorporated in 1999 as a Washington, DC Nonprofit Corporation. NatureServe's programs focus on four main areas: NatureServe partners with IUCN Red List , the accepted standard for worldwide imperiled species classification, providing coordination assistance and data from their own assessments to

2156-568: 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. MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

2205-453: 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

2254-633: The winning proposal was submitted by the Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee . The grant was applied to the education of Middle Eastern refugee children. In May 2022, The MacArthur Foundation, partnered with the Urban Institute announced the launch of a housing stability program designed to break the links between housing instability and jail incarceration. The Just Home Project will provide

2303-430: 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 km ) 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

2352-701: Was founded as a Canadian charity in 2014, building on decades of conservation in Canada. Headquartered in Toronto, the organization has field staff located across the country. Nature United supports Indigenous leadership, sustainable economic development, and large-scale conservation, primarily in the Great Bear Rainforest, Clayoquot Sound, the Northwest Territories, and northern Manitoba. In December 2015, The Nature Conservancy announced

2401-475: Was named president, effective September 1, 2019. The MacArthur Fellowship is an award issued by the MacArthur Foundation each year, to typically 20 to 30 citizens or residents of the United States, of any age and working in any field, who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work". The program was initiated in 1981. According to the foundation, the fellowship

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