America’s forests, farms and ranches are all working lands that are a crucial part of the American landscape: They support rural economies, protect wildlife habitat and preserve a uniquely American way of life. To date, we have protected more than a million acres of the nation’s most vulnerable farms, forests and ranches by keeping them working for current and future generations.
Northeast Woodlands on the Market
In 1998, forest products company Champion International announced the sale of 296,000 acres in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire. It was the most substantial sale of Northeast woodlands in more than a decade, but a broad coalition of local communities, conservationists, forestry workers and outdoor enthusiasts feared the public auction would leave the forests vulnerable to unrestrained development.
The Fund, on the other hand, saw the looming sale as a chance to show what market-based conservation could accomplish. We assembled a diverse group of partners—from timber interests to state agencies—that purchased the entire Champion sale in 1999. Today, the project is hailed as one of the first landscape-level working forest conservation projects, protecting more than 120 miles of river corridor and more than 30 remote lakes and ponds, and creating sustainable forestry and recreation opportunities over 470 square miles in three states.
“The Champion deal had a transformative impact on the timberland market because it showed that conservation groups could be successful when critical ownerships went to auction,” says Evan Smith, the Fund’s vice president for forestland acquisition and finance. “This gave credibility to conservation efforts nationwide and created the momentum necessary to respond to the subsequent tidal wave of forestland sales.”