How to preserve the lands' preservationists

Heritage Conservancy executive Clifford C. David Jr. has a no-nonsense commitment to land protection. That makes all the more unusual his new strategy for maintaining the 10,000 acres under his agency's stewardship.

Part of it involves soaring through a forest canopy attached to a harness and a high-tension cable.

Not David, mind you, but those thrill-seekers and outdoors-lovers he hopes to better acquaint with the woodlands that are part of the portfolio Heritage Conservancy administers from its headquarters at the venerable Aldie Mansion outside Doylestown.

As David sees it, familiarity will lead to more willingness by the public to pay fees to appreciate the pockets of nature his and other land trusts are charged with maintaining in perpetuity.

"It's really a business-development strategy around the resources we have . . . the monetization of the ecosystem," he said.

Such is the business of preserving the region's natural and historic resources in cash-strapped times.

"It's a really fundamental issue that conservancies are starting to grapple with," said T.L. Hill, managing director of the Enterprise Management Consulting Practice at Temple University. "They've made this commitment to steward the land forever, and forever's a long time."

Protecting farms, forests, and meadows from development has been the frantic focus of land-conservation groups for decades.

But as the actual acreage under their control has grown, so, too, has the realization that all that ground needs to be cared for. And that, like purchasing land or the development rights to it, requires a lot of another kind of green: cash.

For many years, conservation trusts have been able to rely on donations, membership fees, and government grants to foot the stewardship bills. But prompted, in part, by the recent recession's endowment-punishing effects, land-protection groups are now in the hunt for more-sustainable funding sources.

"Looking at different opportunities to expand our sources of revenue and expand our bases of support . . . is just good business," said Molly K. Morrison, president and chief executive officer of Natural Lands Trust in Media, which has 40,000 acres in Pennsylvania and New Jersey under its care.

So far, Natural Lands' approach to developing new revenue streams has run to the more conventional - basically, leveraging the land-management expertise of its 62 employees.

Four years ago, with the help of Hill's group at Temple, it created the Center for Conservation Landowners, which makes Natural Lands staff available to property owners - whether individuals, homeowners associations, companies, or municipalities - for such fee-based services as stewardship assessment and land-management planning.

"I won't say it's a home run at this point," Morrison said of the center's contribution to the trust's $6 million annual budget. "But we're doing well."

The nonprofit group also has begun exploring the feasibility of selling on the carbon-trading market credits for the carbon captured by its forests.

A number of local conservancies, such as Willistown Conservation Trust in Chester County, have gotten into farming some of their land for income. Others have rented out their properties for weddings and other events.

None, however, seems to have embarked on a revenue-building initiative with as much dedication and open-mindedness as Heritage Conservancy. In fact, the trust gave an actual title to the effort as of Jan. 1 - Conservation Economics Enterprises - and put David, its president of more than 20 years, in charge. To handle some of his prior administrative duties, the trust hired a chief operating officer.

Though it's too early to say for sure what Heritage's conservation-economics ventures will include, David said not to rule out zip-line rides through some of the woods under its management.

"We are vetting 28 [ideas] to see which of those are something that . . . can be implemented and produce income and also maintain natural and historic resources," he said in an interview Thursday.

That last part is critical, he emphasized.

For help in imagining the possibilities for just its wooded sites, which total about 50, Heritage Conservancy has turned to Temple's Enterprise Management Consulting Practice. It is essentially a hands-on training program for students seeking master's degrees in business administration.

Hill, its managing director, said the four students were expected to present their proposals to the conservancy's senior staff and board members Tuesday.

Along with a zip-line attraction, students have analyzed such possibilities as restaurants that would feature foods grown in the conservancy's woodlands, yoga hikes, and even environmentally sensitive cemeteries, Hill and David said. What they have come up with aren't exactly cash cows - the ideas would likely yield about $150,000 in annual revenue, Hill said.

The conservancy's 2011 budget is $2 million.

Prospects for the trust's agriculture holdings are "probably more promising," he said, though Temple has not been contracted to develop revenue-building options for that land - at least not yet. Hill hopes things get to that point.

"From a business point of view, it's a wonderful, interesting problem," Hill said of land trusts' need to develop long-term, earned-income streams - in an ecologically respectful way.

"It's more difficult than regular business," which doesn't have to be concerned with finding such infinitely long solutions, Hill said.

That "P" word, perpetuity, captured David's attention five years ago, after what he called the "rapid-acquisition phase" of land protection had abated - dating from the 1980s, when counties and towns first passed open-space bond issues.

He took stock of the properties Heritage Conservancy had kept from development, either through outright purchase or through conservation easements, and asked himself: "How are we going to take care of this property with the financial obligations and responsibilities that entails?"

David concluded: "One of the best ways is to make use of the resources you own. The biggest challenge may be identifying the five best business lines."