About Us

The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy preserves the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth. We work in all 50 U.S. states and 30 countries throughout the globe. The Conservancy recently set a goal for the year 2015 to work with its partners to ensure the effective conservation of at least 10% of every major habitat type on Earth. The Conservancy is undertaking several strategies to accomplish this goal. One such strategy is to assess, develop, and foster innovative conservation mechanisms through global programs, such at the Global Marine Team.

Toolkit Development

In 2006, the Nature Conservancy began the development of this on-line toolkit for marine conservation practitioners. The toolkit synthesizes past and present work related to conservation leasing and ownership and points to the future potential of the strategy. With this toolkit, conservation practitioners can determine if conservation leasing and ownership are tools they can use to achieve their marine conservation goals.

Acknowledgements

In addition to The Nature Conservancy staff, volunteers, and web designer, we would like to thank and recognize the organizations and their staff that contributed to the development of the toolkit and its contents:

Audubon Society in California, Florida, and Massachusetts

Coastal States Organization

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Coastal Services Center

Roger Williams University - Marine Affairs Institute and RI Sea Grant Program

State management agencies

The Global Marine Team

The Conservancy's Global Marine Team helps design resilient marine protected areas and implement in-water habitat and shellfish restoration. It also develops priority-setting strategies (using ecoregional assessments with MARXAN, gap analyses, and ecosystem-based management) and evaluates proprietary conservation strategies such as leasing and ownership.

Leasing and Ownership

Leasing and ownership of lands and resources within ocean and coastal waters began in the Conservancy when we discovered some of our upland ownership projects, which were located along shorelines, included intertidal and subtidal lands within the deeds. In these early cases, the intertidal and subtidal ownership was often not the primary resource targeted for conservation. In some cases it was not obvious that the intertidal or subtidal areas were included as part of the transaction. As the Conservancy started to recognize its ownership of intertidal and subtidal areas, it also began to realize that many similar areas had been purchased or leased for hundreds of years by private, commercial enterprises. The Global Marine Team consequently began to explore the large-scale, long-term possibilities for private organizations to lease or own lands and resources within ocean and coastal waters for conservation purposes.

Leasing Assessment

In 2002 the Global Marine Team assessed opportunities for private entities to restore and lease submerged lands owned by the ocean coast states within the United States. The project brought together marine conservation practitioners and state managers to discuss the assessment, which found that all ocean coast states have some form of leasing on state submerged lands (most often for aquaculture) and that the lease rates can be extremely low. The assessment was documented in Leasing and Restoration of Submerged Lands: Strategies for Community-based, Watershed-scale Restoration (download pdf, 1,346k).

State Program Development

From 2002 to 2005, The Nature Conservancy worked with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources to develop a statewide conservation leasing program for state-owned submerged lands in Washington State. This work culminated in a training workshop for state aquatic land managers and programmatic guidelines for conservation leasing. In 2006, The Nature Conservancy entered into the state's first official conservation lease at Woodard Bay in South Puget Sound.

Legal Assessment

In 2005 the Global Marine Team brought together another group (consisting of academics, attorneys, managers, and practitioners) to evaluate the legal aspects of private conservation leasing and ownership. This second evaluation found that private conservation leasing and ownership of submerged lands is supported by the public trust doctrine, many judicial determinations, and many state laws and policies. The evaluation was documented in Towards Conservation of Submerged Lands: The Law and Policy of Conservation Leasing and Ownership (download pdf, 4,332k).