On Sharing Beauty
David Myers
President
The Wildlands Conservancy
If you receive this newsletter, you have probably been welcomed with a smile to one of our 22 magnificent preserves and reserves, or you have joined our free Behold the Beauty Association. Our protected lands now range from Seawood Cape Preserve on the North Coast, to the largest undammed river at Santa Margarita River Trail Preserve on the South Coast, to the flower-permeated Southern California Montane Botanic Garden at Oak Glen Preserve, to the glistening trout-filled waters of Two Rivers Reserve in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.
If you been to several of The Wildlands Conservancy’s preserves, you have probably recognized several common themes: magnificent scenery and a reverence of Beauty, that each preserve is an Ark for many imperiled species with an emphasis on restoring ecosystems, national park quality stone landscape architecture, knowledgeable and passionate staff, and every Preserve is free to all. In fact, for 20 years, The Wildlands Conservancy has led California’s conservancies and land trusts in providing free outdoor environmental education programs for children to nurture the land stewards of tomorrow.
We enjoy being asked “Why we do this for free?” because the answer is simple: The Wildlands Conservancy believes free access to nature is a birthright, and we believe you, our visitors, will be happier, more inspired and insightful, and enriched as human beings for time spent contemplating the workings of nature and connecting with each other in these timeless landscapes. And visitors have and will rally with us when the time comes; for instance, to create one of the largest national monuments in the lower 48 states, our Mojave Trails National Monument, based on Wildlands’s historic California Desert land donation.
Sheephole Mountains Wilderness within the Mojave Trails National Monument. Photo by Jack Thompson.
Most often, however, we are asked “How do we do this for free?” when even national conservancies with far fewer preserves in California, are not open daily for free. The answer lies in you, our visitors. The Wildlands Conservancy created its own organizational model which we call a “Visitorship Organization.” We believe that providing our visitors with experiences that they can breathe in, hear, feel, and see and contemplate, is life-changing. This is very different from paid “Membership Organizations” that have better close-ups of animals, which always seem to be in magazines. Though national groups wildly outnumber The Wildlands Conservancy in California-based fundraising staff, we vastly outnumber them in friend-raising staff—our field biologists, rangers, naturalists and program staff are always happy to greet and assist you at our preserves. Our Visitorship model fosters appreciation of the places we protect, the treasured memories of loved ones in wild settings, and those wonderful moments of spotting a migrating whale, crossing paths with a tule elk herd, or seeing one's first vermilion flycatchers on our protected lands.
Ranger Charlie teaches the next generation of rangers at Oak Glen Preserve. Photo by Elba Mora.
Though we are open for free based on our ideals, visitors realize that keeping California’s largest nonprofit nature preserve system open, with 72 employees, comes at great cost. Since our founding donor gave away all his wealth ten years ago, and lacking an endowment, we have relied on our Visitorship to help keep us growing successfully. To keep pace with our expanding preserves and the demands of saving threatened landscapes, your participation is needed more than ever, as our annual operating expense grows like an alligator, nipping at our heels each budget year. We hope we have made our way into your hearts, we know you have made your way into ours. We wish you peace and joy.