Editor’s note: We’re pleased to bring you this profile of The Nature Conservancy’s new president and CEO, Mark Tercek by Cameron Walker, a regular contributor to The Katoomba Group’s Ecosystem Marketplace. This post was originally published on Tuesday, August 12, 2008.
The new head of the Nature Conservancy is a 24-year Goldman Sachs vet who thinks big and acts globally. The Ecosystem Marketplace talks to Mark Tercek about his past success, his current challenges and his vision for TNC’s future.
Mark Tercek’s kids are stoked. They’ve been on family eco-vacations to Greenland, Patagonia, the Galapagos Islands and Costa Rica — and now, their dad is in charge of a conservation powerhouse that protects many of the spots they’ve visited.
Tercek, who became president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) July 15, ran Goldman Sachs’ Center for Environmental Markets and the firm’s Environmental Strategy Group.
Growing up in Cleveland, Tercek didn’t have extensive exposure to the natural world apart from local parks. Now as a parent of four, he’s gone global so that his own kids can experience nature firsthand.
Clearly, they love it. “When my kids learned I got the job as head of the Conservancy, they were just as excited as I was,” he says.
Along with enthusiasm, Tercek arrives at TNC with decades of experience in the investment banking world and, since 2005, he’s been bridging the narrowing gap between finance and conservation through Goldman Sachs’ environmental initiatives.
Few places on Earth are as untouched as the "Crown of the Continent" — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.
Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana
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Utah has been a second home to me for nearly 20 years. In fact, as I write this, I am looking forward to spending a week at our house near Park City for the upcoming holiday. The state has also long been home to silver mines that continue to taint the local water supplies and force residents to install double osmosis filtering systems just to have potable water.
Public lands within the Utah region and elsewhere have been a longtime target for oil drilling and government granted leases but always with the understand that wilderness and public lands in close proximity to national parks were typically off limits. That is, until the Bush administration decided to green light drilling near national parks in Moab, Utah in 2002. Although park scientists protested that the national parks could take decades to recover from the shock waves caused by local oil derricks, the administration claimed that parks would “barely notice changes,” according to a New York Times article published on February 8, 2002.
In February of this year, proposed oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake region was met with great resistance from residents and local and national environmental groups, such as The Friends of the Great Salt Lake and the Wilderness Conservancy who at the time I wrote this had received nearly 10,000 signatures in protest of the drilling from around the world.
More than 90% of Americans are recycling — but fewer than 5% have taken recommended green actions such as driving less or reducing their utility use, according to a new Harris Poll on green living released today.
The poll — for which The Nature Conservancy provided input and advice — found that 53% of those surveyed have taken steps to green their lives.
But it also found a substantial lack of knowledge about how to go green — and skepticism about
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In honor of the impending wedding season, The Nature Conservancy offers tips to make your special day one Mother Nature will celebrate.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something… green? It’s really not as out of the ordinary as it sounds—last year, Brides.com estimated that approximately 33% of future brides and grooms in the U.S. are planning an eco-friendly wedding.
Today, The Nature Conservancy is issuing tips for planning a greener wedding or commitment ceremony, with ideas from invitations through
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Long-tailed macaques eat mostly fruit — but when resources are scarce, they’ve been known to get creative with their cuisine. When living near humans, they raid gardens and learn to beg for food. Sometimes they even steal food from inside houses.
Now, for the first time, scientists have observed long-tailed macaques fishing with their bare hands.
Top 10 Ways to Help Save Our Oceans…
Just below the water’s surface lies a magical world teeming with life and value. Coral reefs are home to 4,000 fish species and provide the world with goods and services — such as jobs, foods, medicines and storm protection — worth $375 billion annually.
But scientists estimate that 70% of all corals reefs could be lost by 2050 if current rates of destruction continue — from factors ranging from overfishing to climate change.
Planting biofuel crops on converted forestlands or other ecologically valuable lands has already become a hotly debated practice.
Now, a new report co-authored by Nature Conservancy scientists says that biofuel crops could also become invasive species — and that the risk needs to be evaluated before these crops are planted.
By Jennifer Lance •
February 20, 2008
In this week’s Sierra Club Insider, it was stated that the family vacation is disappearing from American culture.
According to Treehugger, a new study by Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois-Chicago and Patricia Zaradic of the Environmental Leadership Program found that “the time children spend in nature — particularly the activities we looked at in this study — determines their environmental awareness as adults.”
Citing the same study co-sponsored by the Nature Conservancy, the Grist states
Kids — and adults — these days are “videophiliacs” who prefer their nature through the TV screen rather than personally experienced, says a new study. It estimates that Americans’ participation in outdoor recreation has dropped as much as 25 percent over the past 20 years.
What’s a green family to do? Beyond offsetting your typical trip to Disneyland, there are now many eco travel tours and trips for families. Of course you don’t have to join a tour to take a memorable eco trip with your family. Camping and backpacking provide wonderful opportunities for families to experience nature; however, a well-designed eco trip will allow you to meet other families and take some of the responsibility off of your shoulders.
Tips, tips, tips… they’re everywhere on the green web. Of course, we’ve contributed a hefty share of them ourselves at GO Media, but when we launched the blog network, we decided to put them on hiatus. Why? Well, as I said, they’re everywhere… and you often find the same ones at multiple sites, over and over…
Now, I’m not criticizing the use of practical snippets that can help almost anyone green up their lifestyle, as they’re one of the best ways to reach out to people who still need a little guidance on this whole “green living” thing. But in addition to their ubiquity, the tips most of us publish often lack an explanation of their rationale. Why does changing your light bulbs, or taking a cloth bag to the grocery store, help the environment?
The folks at The Nature Conservancy are answering those kinds of questions with the launch of “Everyday Environmentalist,” which features tips from TNC scientists, and a handful of green bloggers (including Hank Green of EcoGeek, Victoria Everman of our own Crafting a Green World, and, yes, me). The idea behind “Everyday Environmentalist” isn’t to just provide a action, but to also explain the science behind it. So when, for instance, TNC marketing manager Dave Connell explains some ways to make better use of the energy expended by leaving your computer on all the time, he notes the carbon footprint created by doing this in the first place: “In fact, if you leave your computer on 24 hours a day, it could be responsible for releasing up to 1,500 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. The flying-toaster screen saver is cool…but is it that cool?”
