A Conservationist Turns to the City

What was it like moving from The Nature Conservancy to the Urban Land Institute? They seem like very different organizations. For one thing, one focuses on wild areas and the other focuses on settled areas.

When I worked at The Nature Conservancy, a dramatic transformation was taking place in conservation everywhere. We were shifting from this older notion of parks and protected areas, places that we put fences around and kept people out of, to one where people are going to be part of conservation landscapes.

Increasingly, there are fewer and fewer places in the world that you can imagine being completely pristine. So at The Nature Conservancy our work changed significantly, from being wholly focused on protecting wild places to also working on conservation issues involving land that was ranched or farmed or timbered. We were also engaging urban populations about where their water and food is coming from.