Relationships

There’s no more simple truth in the conservation business:  If the locals don’t benefit from an environmental protection program, now and in the future, then the program won’t last beyond the current generation, if even that long. We can buy land, but if we don’t have the support of the people who live there, that land will be invaded, its natural resources pillaged. We can only guide and motivate using our hearts and heads, with our feet on the ground. We practice the only business model that will protect the land for generations: We develop deep relationships with the people who call these ecosystems home.

Nothing is more important to us than building strong relationships with the people we strive to help through our programs–and not just strong relationships–unshakable ones. For conservation to last, local people must be motivated and helped to protect what they already know and love, and not be induced to destroy it for short-term gain.

As experienced conservationists, we have protected more than eight million acres of exceptional habitat, yet we know that, over time, policy makers, industrialists and even military groups may well test those boundaries.

Not everyone believes in the power of biodiversity. People must arrive at this conclusion on their own. What we can do is develop relationships of trust with local people and their political leaders, so that’s what we do. That action has proven very productive.

Relationships built on trust allow us to show people their own forest home through a conservation lens and help them to learn how to save what they already respect. Trusted relationships are Nature and Culture’s critical skillset. This is how we gain the opportunity to permanently conserve large areas.

All this is done in a way that is measured, recorded and reported back to our supporters. Nature and Culture can do this at astonishingly favorable rates by putting resources and science into the hands of local leaders, conservationists and biologists–our “boots on the ground.”