Packard Fund Doubles Efforts to Protect Open Space in California

By STEPHEN G. GREENE

In a fight against time, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has doubled its support for efforts to shield California farmland, wildlife habitat, and other open space from developers.

Halfway through its five-year, $175-million Conserving California Landscapes Initiative, the foundation has already met its initial goal of protecting 250,000 acres by 2003. It has therefore announced that it will double its gift to $350-million and its land goal to more than 500,000 acres.

The project aims to conserve large tracts of open space in three regions of the state: the central coast, the central valley, and the Sierra Nevada, while also developing policies and nonprofit organizations to support its conservation goals.

“If we don’t act now to protect these lands we’ll destroy one of the most beautiful, livable, and biologically rich regions in the world — and squander a great treasure,” said Jeanne Sedgwick, who directs Packard’s conservation program. But a much larger effort will be required, she added, if development is to be curbed successfully in a state whose population is projected to grow by 40 million people in the next four decades.

“Foundations cannot do this alone,” Ms. Sedgwick said. “Our work seeks to bring unlikely partners together and to lure new players into the movement.”

Packard’s program involves collaborations between government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private landowners to buy and sell land, agricultural easements, or water rights.

To encourage broad-based participation in the land deals, the foundation provides no more than half the cost of any transaction, and does not make any purchases itself.