The Nature Conservancy's 2020 Annual Report

Tackle Climate Change

The fix is global, it’s local, and it starts now.

Australia Smoke rises up during a devastating fire season in Australia. Climate change is contributing to these record fires. © Andrew Merry/Getty Images

Bezos Earth Fund

Transformative $100 million gift boosts TNC climate action.

The Conservancy’s innovative efforts to develop natural climate solutions received a tremendous boost from a $100 million gift from the Bezos Earth Fund. The gift funds climate work in two critical regions—India’s agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana, as well as the Emerald Edge of coastal Washington, British Columbia and Alaska. The funding also supports efforts to replicate natural climate solutions on a larger scale. This gift, the second largest ever received by TNC, jump-starts our pio­neering work to harness nature to reduce carbon emissions around the world.

How this gift will reduce carbon emissions:

India

Challenge: Farmers burn crop residue to prepare their fields for new plantings, generating climate emissions and deadly air pollution in neighboring cities.

Solution: Introducing new regenerative agriculture approaches—including no-till planting—ends the need for burning, saves water, increases farmer incomes, boosts soil health and stores carbon.

Emerald Edge

Challenge: The temperate rainforests of the Emerald Edge hold one of the world’s largest stores of carbon, but these forests are at risk.

Solution: Preserving coastal rainforests in partnership with First Nations peo­ples honors a vision of Indigenous-led stewardship while securing forests as storehouses of carbon.

Funding from the Bezos Earth Fund will help ensure the long-term protection of 250,000 acres of old-growth forest and more.
Spirit Bear Funding from the Bezos Earth Fund will help ensure the long-term protection of 250,000 acres of old-growth forest and more. © Ralph A. Clevenger/Tandem Stock

Road Map to Refuge

As climate change forces species to move, new science is identifying habitats that can help them survive.

“Nature is changing and we can’t hold it steady, so we have to find a way to protect it while it shifts,” says Dr. Mark Anderson, TNC’s director of conservation science for the eastern U.S. Anderson helped lead the creation of TNC’s newly completed Resilient and Connected Landscapes mapping tool. In a sense, the tool serves as a map of “natural highways and neighborhoods” covering one-third of the continental U.S. The interactive map shows where plant and animal species have the best chance to move in response to growing climate threats—and find new places to call home. Studies show that each decade plants and animals have shifted approximately 11 miles north and 36 feet higher in elevation in response to the changing climate, making this project an essential conservation tool.

Shadows at sunset highlight the landscape of the Pioneer Mountains. Parts of this region are included in the Resilient and Connected Landscapes work.
Refuge Shadows at sunset highlight the landscape of the Pioneer Mountains. Parts of this region are included in the Resilient and Connected Landscapes work. © Wide Eye Production

Siting Solar and Wind Power

Conservancy tools can help growth in renewables without harming natural lands.

The build-out of new renewable energy is underway, and at an unprecedented pace. Yet some of the most promising clean-energy sources, such as wind and large-scale solar installations, call for large areas of land. Scientists at TNC are showing how nations can meet global clean-energy goals while protecting natural lands.

TNC science is showing how to protect natural lands while developing new clean-energy sources to meet critical climate goals.
Heliostats TNC science is showing how to protect natural lands while developing new clean-energy sources to meet critical climate goals. © Ian Shive/Tandem Stock

A Better Blueprint for the Clean Energy Landscape

How do we meet global clean energy goals while protecting natural lands?

Dig Deeper

The Conservancy’s Site Wind Right interactive mapping is helping industry accelerate planning while steering infrastructure development away from sensitive habitat in the Great Plains, and new strategies are doing the same for solar energy in California, Nevada and West Virginia.

In India, TNC’s new SiteRight tool is proving a necessary planning asset for the country’s rapidly expanding renewable-energy sector. Says TNC’s Dhaval Negandhi, an ecological economist, “If you don’t think about these impacts, they become conflicts that impede and slow down your project.” With India’s ambitious national clean-energy targets in place, the industry can’t afford build-out delays, so TNC’s smart siting tool offers a pathway to a new clean-energy future.

Rainforest Reforestation

Honoring donor generosity with a Gratitude Forest.

To plant a single tree is an act of hope and faith in what’s to come. In Brazil’s Serra da Mantiqueira region in the endangered Atlantic Forest, TNC is planting seedlings one by one, bringing new life to deforested hillsides. With every tree planted, a Grati­tude Forest is taking root and touching the sky—honoring the generosity of TNC’s most devoted advocates.

In appreciation of our donors, TNC is nurturing this forest in a place of great need and possibility. Down­stream in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, people rely on the Mantiqueira’s forests to store and filter the water that makes life possible.

Claudia Picone, a staff member with The Nature Conservancy, plants seedlings in the Extrema municipality of Brazil.
Planting seedlings Claudia Picone, a staff member with The Nature Conservancy, plants seedlings in the Extrema municipality of Brazil. © Adriano Gambarini

This Gratitude Forest is far from a single effort. It’s a piece of TNC’s inspiring Plant a Billion Trees campaign, be­ginning as a gift and then, like a seed, growing into a legacy for future generations.

Through the Gratitude Forest, TNC and partners are helping to restore the region’s living forests, inspired by our supporters, because we believe that the powerful act of planting a tree is an investment in the future of the planet.

Culture of Fire

Indigenous communities restore fire to the landscape.

Indigenous people, such as the Karuk, Yurok and Hupa peoples of present-day California, have been practicing controlled and intentional burns for millennia. Yet in many developed countries, these cultural fires, and their ecological benefits, largely disappeared by the 20th century often due to policies aimed at suppressing wildfire.

Our Work with Local Communities

Deeper connections—and greater conservation results.

How we connect and listen

The declining health of many forests and grasslands now reveals the long-term costs of removing fire from landscapes that have been shaped by Indigenous fire steward­ship. Holding back low-intensity fires can lead to bigger—in some cases catastrophic—wildfires that take a toll on human health, harm nature and put communities at risk.

A firefighter manages the boundary of an Indigenous cultural burn during a 2019 Yurok Prescribed Fire Training Exchange in California.
Cultural Burn A firefighter manages the boundary of an Indigenous cultural burn during a 2019 Yurok Prescribed Fire Training Exchange in California. © Kiliii Yüyan

Through intersecting connections in Australia, Canada and the United States, TNC is supporting the efforts of Indigenous communities to revitalize use of cultural fires in today’s context. In TNC’s North America fire programs, which conduct roughly 600 burns on 100,000 acres every year, we now help facilitate or fund workshops, learning exchanges and community-based trainings that support Indigenous communities’ efforts to bring the benefits of cultural burning to people and landscapes alike.

Quote: Bill Tripp

Without being able to freely engage in our cultural burning practices, we lose our culture.

Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, Karuk Tribe