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The Race for Space
New Nature Conservancy head McGrath gets back to the land
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Business New Haven
8/7/2000
By: BNH
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On February 1, Dennis J. McGrath, 43, became vice president and state chapter director of the Nature Conservancy, replacing Denise Schlener. His roots in the national conservation organization run deep; he started working for the Indiana chapter as an intern in 1983, rising to that chapter's directorship in six years. The Connecticut chapter has 23,000 members and an annual budget of about $3.1 million.
What are the organization's principal goals?
First, we're always in the beginning, middle or end of a capital campaign; we're always raising money and I think that's foremost in people's minds. The second is an organizational goal, one that has international implications: selecting the places that we want to make investments in. The ultimate outcome of this is developing a conservation blueprint for North America and other places in Central and South America where we're [working on conservation issues].
What do you mean when you say 'investments'?
I mean direct financial investments, capital, that we would raise and use to acquire land. A secondary definition is investments we make in terms of work we do on the land, particularly land management, affirmative biological or ecological management to care for the areas that we have title to.
What are some of the Connecticut properties that the Nature Conservancy is involved with?
We have been very active in an area in southwestern Connecticut and Fairfield County called the Devil's Den [in Weston] and that is a preserve of about 1,700 acres that we've had for a number of years. Interestingly, sometimes we couldn't see the forest because of the trees, and it happens to sit in a very large landscape of wetlands, streams and forest that, collected all together, constitute a very important part of the New England landscape.
So you found you had a small piece of a larger area?
Exactly. The real question we are now facing as an organization is how we work in landscapes like that. Fundamentally, instead of setting aside a plot of land we are buying and owning,. we are looking at in some cases hundreds or thousands of different land ownerships in a landscape - and they tend to be large landscapes. You begin to ask yourself how in these landscapes, particularly in highly populated areas, how do you protect and conserve them? We're still trying to figure out how to do that. There's also a role that we can play as advisor-consultants to land owners who have similar interests to ours to keep their land natural. But I think probably the key role that we are playing is one which would be the most highly leveraged: We are putting staff people in these larger landscape areas so we have a staff and a presence in the community. They're residents of the community: They coach softball teams, churches, temples, synagogues - they become part of the community. That understanding of the local community - the culture, local politics, what the direct threats are - influences their thinking, and we hope we can influence some positive changes on the landscape.
Connecticut historically is a small state that is continuing to lose open space. How do you see the future of open space in Connecticut, is that an issue for the Nature Conservancy, or are there other groups that do that kind of work?
There are other groups we work with that do that. We are kind of a sub-set of the open space movement; we have a very specific mission and outcome that we wish to achieve, and it's much more narrowly defined than open space.
I think there are 116 different land trusts throughout the state.
How does the Nature Conservancy work with the business community?
We work with the business community the same way we work with our other members and donors. Corporations that support us and other organizations oftentimes have philanthropic donations as part of their company's mission. We try to engage the companies in a number of different ways. Probably the most important is to have employees of the company serve on our board or affiliate with us in some way. Much of our membership pool comes from corporations.
If there are some priorities for Connecticut that have come from the board up what would they be?
We're in the final stages of identifying those now and affirming them. We don't have the final numbers so I'm no comfortable guessing what it will be but I do know that we are going to have places that are coming out of this process that are going to be across Connecticut. I can give you some general examples. Many places along the coast, in the tide-lands areas of the Connecticut River, a project of ours for 10 years. The Double Den area that I mentioned before, the northwestern part of Connecticut, Millbrook, different wetlands systems that we're working on.
Does the Nature Conservancy monitor changes in environmental laws in Connecticut, and do you do any lobbying?
We don't lobby in the sense that we're trying to change or modify regulatory practices, rules, regulations or administrative law. What we do and have done, for example, is try to represent the need for open space. The governor and the legislature have committed a substantial amount of funding over the last two legislative sessions for open space protection. So, yes, we do interact with the legislature and the governor, but we're not doing any regulatory lobbying or administrative lobbying.
What do you hope to accomplish over the next 12 months?
We will have a conservation blueprint. Number two would be using that blueprint to inform our donors, members and all the people that we work with about the need to conserve these places and then go about raising the funds to do that.
You've worked elsewhere. How do you find people's association to the land in Connecticut?
There's a terrific conservation ethic in New England and it certainly applies to Connecticut, perhaps particularly to Connecticut. Connecticut faced tremendous growth pressures from the east coast, New York and even Boston. It's a small state but it is by and large a rural state still, with most of the growth taking place along the shoreline and of course the Hartford area. So we're fortunate to have a lot a landscape, relatively speaking, left for conservation work. I think there's an opportunity to make a truly lasting impact on the landscape, but unlike 200 or 300 years ago - when our landscape went from forest to clearing for farming and the farming industry shifted to the towns and industry took over and the land reverted back to forest land - we don't have that luxury now because when land is converted it's usually not for agriculture, it's converted for homes or buildings or roadways. And that conversion tends to be permanent. So this is probably the last chance we'll have to make a lasting impact on preserving the landscape in Connecticut.
Do you think most people have a sense of urgency about that objective?
Yes, I do. I think the legislature and the governor in particular see it as an issue. It comes down to a quality-of-life issue, and that's obviously something they care about. Are they as aware as they could be? Maybe not. How much time do we have left? I don't know if people are that well informed. What the Conservancy would like to do is say from an ecological perspective, 'Here is a blueprint to do what we think has to be done to capture the key places in the Connecticut landscape that are still there.' And I think that will give us a tool to articulate to our members and others who share that interest.
Do you see the state's economic-development conflicting with that blueprint?
Every place that we will or have identified that's in this blueprint is threatened in one way or another. Each place will be influenced by development pressures and growth. I think there's a great sense of urgency, I think we're going to have to work at a pace more rapid and be more effective than we've ever been before.
BNH
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