Conservation Economics, Carbon Capture, and Climate Change with Larry Selzer

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Larry Selzer, President and CEO of The Conservation Fund about Conservation Economics, Carbon Capture, and Climate Change.  Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes:
2:31  Nic & Laura Talk Briefly about Conservation Economics
3:36 Interview with Larry Selzer Starts
8:06  Conservation Economics
23:17  Climate Change
37:30  Carbon Capture

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Larry Selzer at https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-selzer-b243239/

Guest Bio:
Larry Selzer is president and CEO of The Conservation Fund, one of the nation’s top-ranked environmental nonprofits, based in Arlington, VA. The only environmental group in the country chartered for both conservation and economic development, the Fund has protected more than 8.5 million acres since 1985. 

Prior to being named president and CEO in 2001, Selzer led the Fund’s efforts to integrate economic and environmental goals, including its efforts in mitigation, working forest conservation and small business investing.

Selzer began his career at the Manomet Center for Conservation Science, conducting research on marine mammal and seabird populations on the eastern outer continental shelf. He serves as the chairman of the American Bird Conservancy, vice chairman of Leading Harvest, and is on the board of Weyerhaeuser. He served as chairman of the Outdoor Foundation and twice served as chair of the Sustainable Forest Initiative, Inc.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-transcribed

[Intro]

Laura 
Hello and Welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Nic and I discussed kind of nothing. Larry Selzer, the CEO of the Conservation Fund, about conservation in terms of economics, carbon capture and climate change. And finally, koalas sleep for up to 22 hours a day. Mostly because their diet is very low in energy. How do they have a low energy diet? This basically

Nic 
plants like it's a one Plant, plant, eucalyptus. I guess it's it's scrappy, scrappy. Diet. I don't know why, but that's what they do.

Laura 
They basically have to sleep to survive. I think polar bears only three hours a day. They're really good polar bears are run for their money.

Nic 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cuz they hibernate. Well, yeah, that's like an 18 to 22 hours every day. They're just like you know what, I'm out.

Laura 
I like that my next life. While we're

Nic 
back, can't wait to tell my bosses. Hey, look, I gotta sleep to survive. So I'm available for two hours every day and some of that's going to be eating. Gotta be honest with you. So I think they'll feed me. I don't know.

Laura  
I think your work will be commensurate with your pay. And that means.

[NEPA Event News]

Nic 
Tune in for the NEPA case law update webinar with our very own Fred Wagner, Michael Smith and Pam Hudson on September 21, at 9am Pacific noon Eastern. This webinar will mirror the case law presentation provided during the NAEP 2022. Conference and training symposium with updates as warranted. It's a really great presentation. These three folks are fantastic at this job. This is one day you guys really need to pay attention to so September 21st at 9am, Pacific noon Eastern, check it out at www.naep.org we are up to over 25,000 downloads for this podcast that is so so wild. We are appreciative of all of our listeners and supporters and we really appreciate all of our sponsors as well and they are right there will keep the show going. If you'd like to sponsor the show please head on over to www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com And check out our sponsor forum for details. Now let's get to our segment.

[Nic & Laura Talk Very Briefly about Conservation Economics]

Nic
It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist I really short segment. You know there's always a balance between conservation and economy. I think one of the most fascinating parts of conservation has been using economic drivers as a tool or getting people to buy in. It is you know, tough to say sometimes they go we have to have money involved in order care. But if you take away someone's livelihood, right they're supposed to they get money for poaching, for example, and you can take that away. I think everybody can't do that the market is bad. What are they going to do to provide for the families and giving them an opportunity to do you know, tourism, you know, Wildlife Safaris or whatever it is, is a much better plan idea than just saying well, good luck. I hope you don't do anything illegal because we'll arrest you. You know, that was really neat. I really enjoyed talking with him about that.

Laura 
Yeah, for sure. I think too, that it is a bummer that it has to be tied to economics like why can't we just save something because it's the right thing to do. It's not the world we live in. But I think he has a really great insights on it. And you know, it was kind of a long interview. So I think we should just jump right in.

[Interview with Larry Selzer Starts]

Nic 
Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Larry Selzer, president and chief executive officer at the Conservation Fund, one of the nation's top ranked environmental nonprofits based in Arlington, Virginia. On the show, Larry has a really important job and we're really excited to have him here. Welcome, Larry.

Larry Selzer 
I'm thrilled to be here.

Nic  
So your career started at the Management Center for Conservation Science conducting research on marine mammal and seabird populations. What drew you to the field of study?

Larry Selzer 
I grew up in New England on the shore and from the time I was very young, five years old, I wanted to be a marine biologist. In my house, we didn't watch a lot of television but on Sunday nights, we would watch mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom. And then occasionally we would watch Jacques Cousteau. And I thought that was just the greatest thing in the world and I was very lucky when I graduated from college. I got a job at the Management Center for Conservation services, which had just received a contract to document the marine mammals, seabirds and sea turtle population on the eastern Outer Continental Shelf the waters off the coast of the United States, because President Ronald Reagan had proposed opening up that area for oil and gas exploration. And I spent the next seven years going out to see collecting data and trying to document the populations of these animals. And I realized a couple of things The first was only Jacques Cousteau gets to be Jacques Cousteau, I likely wasn't going to be on the Calypso in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean. But more importantly, I realized that most of the major decisions that affected the natural resources that I cared about, were driven by either politics or money. And I wasn't very interested in the politics, the regulatory side, but I realized that I didn't know anything about money, how it really works in our system, decision making in capitalism. And so instead of going back to graduate school to get a PhD in biology, I went to business school to learn about money. And when I was in business school, I met the fellow who had just founded the Conservation Fund. That was back in 1988. I did a summer internship with him that summer. And then when I graduated in 1990, I joined the Conservation Fund and I've been there

Nic 
ever since. Oh, wow, man, so many different questions. I want to ask you right off the bat. So what let's start with the basic one. Right. So what is the mission of the Conservation Fund? How do you guys define conservation?

Larry Selzer 
Well, I think I'm the luckiest person in the world to have landed at the Conservation Fund precisely because of the mission that we have, and the work that we get to do. Pat Noonan, the fellow who founded the Conservation Fund previously had built the Nature Conservancy had been there for a number of years, and he was the first person to reach out and engage the private sector in the work of conservation. And that was in the 1970s, when business was really not regarded as a good partner. They were the enemy. And yet he persisted and had some great success and won a MacArthur Genius Award in the early 1980s. For that effort, he left the Nature Conservancy to form the Conservation Fund, so that he could be more explicit about working at the interface of business and the environment trying to balance economic return and environmental protection. And when I met him, he was just thinking about how to scale up this new enterprise. And the mission that he described this dual purpose of economic development and conservation seemed to resonate perfectly with my experience when I was doing the biology work offshore and my emerging interest in how to move conservation forward. So I joined this startup organization, I was the 14th employee and got to build out the economic development side of this organization as others were building out the conservation side. We are uniquely positioned in the environmental movement in that we are the only organization that has a dual purpose charter. So under our nonprofit umbrella, we have a straight up provision for conservation in a straight up provision for economic development. And for the last three decades, I've been able to work at that exciting interface trying to bring both to bear

Nic 
so I mean, I think many of our listeners hearing you even say that you decided to go learn about money, right? Which is really, really important. Probably one of the most important things when it comes to any kind of science truthfully, how did you come up with that idea? Where did that actually come from? And how do you use that even now you must use it all the time.

Larry Selzer 
Well, I'd like to say that it was thoroughly thought out, but I think the truth is that I've been learning each and every day as we go forward. When I first realized the importance of money in the decision making it really was as an unequal Park. It was almost as if you think about the start of a bad joke. For every major decision, the politics the money in the science would walk into a bar. And right before they walk into the bar, the politics and the money would look at the science and say No look, when we get inside you sit down and be quiet. It will tell you what the answer is. Even though publicly, people always say, well, we want to base our decisions on the best available science. I found that that wasn't always true. And so if the power structure was based either on the politics or the money, I needed to learn about money so that I could sit at the table, if you will, I could be in the room when the decisions were being made. And I would understand the language that was being used and the tools that were being used. Now, that was where I started, where I have come to is a much different place. I would say a more sophisticated understanding of how money can be used to accelerate conservation. If you think about it, I believe we're entering the third era of the environmental movement in this country. The first era began when Teddy Roosevelt was president and lands were being destroyed by commercial interests for housing for railroad for mining. And Roosevelt was dismayed by all that and he began to set aside land that's where the National Forest System and the Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System come from. And as a result, millions of acres have been set aside, this country is now the envy of the world in terms of protected land. That era lasted until the 1950s into the 1960s when after World War Two the nation began to industrialize at a rapid pace. And our challenges then took a different form instead of land being consumed by commercial interest. It was more about pollution. And rivers were changing color every day through the dye that was being used in the sun in places like Pittsburgh, and Cleveland and Alabama was so great. If you got in your car, you had to turn your windshield wipers on. And then a woman named Rachel Carson published a book called Silent Spring and for the first time she liked human health and the environment and that unleashed a tidal wave of grassroots activism that yielded more than 50,000 pieces of legislation and regulation, including some of the most powerful laws this country's ever passed the Clean Air Act Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act. I think we are now entering the third era of the environmental movement. And I have chosen to call it the era of convergence. And the reason that I think we're entering this new era is we're not merely creating new national parks or national wildlife refuges. What we really need to do is figure out how to manage private lands in context of public lands, how we need to manage things at landscape scale, the challenges we face, whether it's biodiversity or water quality, and of course climate change, require us to think at a scale never before considered in the environmental movement that requires an amount of investment that traditional philanthropy or even public agencies cannot match. It requires investment by the private sector. And I think this era of convergence is about bringing two of the most powerful forces in the country together, the environmental movement and the free enterprise system. And so my thinking around money is that money is going to be critical investment money, not just charitable money in the future of conservation across the United States.

[Conservation Econonomics]

Nic  
And one of the challenges was actually you know, because money is how it's used as probably the most scrutinized part of just about any time it's it comes up right how do you choose where that money goes, how much you need, and what it's going to be used for?

Larry Selzer 
Well, it's a great question. Let me try to answer that in the context of the mission of the conservation fund. So what we do and we do it better than anybody in the country is buy land for conservation. Now, our particular business model is that we work with public agencies at the federal, state and local level. And they tell us what their priorities are. And it might be a wildlife refuge. It might be a park, it might be a greenway. There any number of priorities that these public agencies have. Once they identify their priority, they asked us to buy it for them. And the reason for that is that it is very rare that a public agency has the money when the landowner wants to sell. And we realized that we could step into that bridge and bridge finance the transaction. So we raised a pool of capital, we call it our revolving fund. And when we're asked to buy a property, we buy it, we hold it until the public money is ready. And then the agency will buy it back from us for permanent protection and stewardship. It's a very efficient and effective mechanism, but it requires a pool of ready capital that can be deployed very quickly. I call it the house factor, you have to be ready to pounce when the circumstances are right. That model held up very well until quite recently, when lo and behold, after 30 years of trying, Congress passed, and the President signed the great american outdoors Act, which effectively doubled the amount of federal funding for land contribution, yet our capital base has remained the same, even though we're being asked to do twice the work that we were before. And so if you think about money, and you think about investment, dollars, these are opportunities for investors who care about impact. They care about conservation, they care about the community vitality that comes from these protected lands to help us meet the promise of the great american outdoors act by allowing us to use their capital to bridge finance other transactions. It's a wonderful opportunity for people to think differently about how their balance sheet if you will, can be used for permanent contribution outcome, even though they can get the money back.

Laura 
That is fascinating stuff. And some things to consider. You hear the news that we're going to conserve more lands, but then not knowing underlying mechanisms of how that's going to happen. How do you identify those investors and people who would be interested in giving something more than just charitable dollars?

Larry Selzer 
Well, identifying people who care about conservation is a full time job. And for the Conservation Fund, we're a non membership group, meaning we do not have a membership. We're grateful for every dollar that's given for our mission, but we really are looking for people who can make significant contributions to the work that we're doing. If you're buying properties there, anywhere from $1 million to $20 million. You need people who can step up and allow you to use much larger sums of money. And so a lot of it is word of mouth. A lot of it is highlighting the projects we've done, but it is a constant effort to reach out and find people who care about land conservation. They understand that economic sustainability is based on conserving the land and resources that we have, and they are willing to step into the breach with us. And we hope through frankly, venues just like this, that we can reach people who have the same mission alignment that we do, and who understand the risks that we take the business model that we have, and they they liked the use of their capital for such a permanent and powerful impact.

Laura 
Right. That's awesome. Well, I'm glad to hear I hope some people listening are finding out about your organization and realizing that this is an opportunity. Have you been working with like legacy funds? Is that an I know that in Hillsborough County when I was working there that people looking to do something with our trust was like a new opportunity for a lot of people?

Larry Selzer 
Yes, I think it's a really exciting opportunity to reach a next generation of people who will care. Obviously, people know about the melons and the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's and the people who had great wealth and endowed certain activities across the country. The Richard King Mellon Foundation in particular has facilitated more land conservation than any other entity in the country in the history of the country. And yet, we need to reach the next generation of people who will care about conservation. I think climate change give us an opportunity to do that in a new platform or a new program. The Conservation Fund is uniquely positioned to make that matchmaking and try and get people engaged and let me explain. The single greatest land conservation challenge that we have in the country today is the loss of large, intact working forests. And by working forest I mean for us, they're being harvested that are on the tax rolls. They're supporting the local jobs and the local economy.

These forests are being lost at the rate of almost a million acres a year, as land is converted to develop. We've lost 40 million acres in just the last 20 years. And yet, these are not just any lands. These forests are the lands that provide us with clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. They provide wildlife habitat, recreation opportunities, jobs for more than 2 million Americans and these are jobs that can't be exported overseas. And yes, they also are a significant part of our efforts to address climate change forests because they absorb carbon dioxide and stored as carbon in the wood address 15% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions. You think about how important that is and then you think about losing a million acres a year. It's not a healthy dynamic. The Conservation Fund decided that we had to figure out a way to step into the breach. And so 10 years ago, we put together a pool of capital. This is money that was given to us in part some of it was loaned to us by foundations. And state agencies. And we began to acquire these working for us when they came on the market to prevent them from being converted to something other than trees in other words, a shopping center or an industrial park or second homes. This model is based on the following cycle we buy the property when it comes on the market. We establish a sustainable harvest plan to make sure that the forest is managed appropriately. That buys us the time that we need to line up public funding usually from a state to buy a permanent conservation easement. And that easement which is a deed restriction that prevents the property from being subdivided or developed but allows for sustainable harvesting. That easement is the permanent conservation outcome we see once that's in place we can then sell the forest back to an investor who wants to own a sustainably managed forest. Now a sustainably managed forest might yield five or 6%. That's not a bad return. If you're looking to put something like that in your investment portfolio that not only has a yield that resembles a bond it's a steady annual return, but also delivers enormous benefits in terms of water quality biodiversity and addressing climate change. Because these forests are revenue generating assets. We have an opportunity to reach out to those trusts to people who have impact investing funds to corporations that have made Net Zero pledges but are looking for ways to meet them. All of those people now have a path to invest in forest conservation, where they can get their money back they can generate a solid return and they can make a permanent contribution to climate change. That has not existed anywhere in the United States until we put this program together. It is now the fastest growing part of the Conservation Fund. We now own and manage almost a million acres of forest across the country. All of it on the tax rolls, all of it being harvested to support the communities and jobs in these rural areas that are dependent upon the forest products industry. And yet all of it will be permanently concerned and the climate change fighting capabilities of these forests will be preserved. It's almost a miraculous outcome. It's it's like a perpetual motion machine because when we get out of one project and return our money to our account, we can turn around and buy the next forest and do it again and again. It is a permanent revolving pool of capital. It's one of the most exciting things we're doing. But going back to our earlier conversation, for the first time there is a clear sight line for people who have money to invest in the business of conservation. And we are speaking their language we're using the tools of the marketplace to help them understand how their money can deliver permanent impact and solid returns.

[Climate Change]

Nic 
Very, very interesting and I think it's a really, really unique approach to dealing with climate change. But I want to ask, you know, maybe this is a little deeper dive to on this. So in general, habitats are pretty dynamic, right? They don't stay the same. It's not always grassland always forests, whatever, right? They're basically ebb and flow and with climate change, I feel like we're seeing that happen on a larger scale. Is that something that you guys taking into account when you're looking at? Well, how do we ensure that this is going to be a forest in the future? If climate is changing significantly in an area where that becomes harder? Do you look at that and you're doing your modeling for determining where are the best places to be?

Larry Selzer 
We do and remember earlier in our conversation, I talked about conservation, graduating in scale to the landscape scale. If you're just buying a piece of property and it's going to be a new park or a wildlife refuge, and essentially you've drawn a line on a map with a boundary around it. 50 years from now, 100 years from now, you'll still have that protected land. But what if the climate has changed and the reason you bought that property, some endangered species? can no longer live there, if that habitat doesn't have a way to migrate, and you really have to question whether or not you're protecting properties for the right reasons, as we think about climate change and the long term impact that that will have on land and water resources. We are really excited about the work we're doing at landscape scale, because if you are addressing conservation at a large enough scale, then you are providing opportunities for habitats to migrate north in this case if things get drier and warmer, and so a particular acre may not have the same species or the same function that it had 100 years ago. It will have different functions it will still be open space and providing that optionality. is critically important. And allowing habitats to migrate means that the species you are targeting in the first place will have a place to go. And so it has meant that we have to be more sophisticated, more science driven in terms of how we think about landscape scale conservation. Again, that requires enormous amounts of capital, but all of these because they take into account private lands, not just public lands, some of them are working for us. Some of them are working farms, some of them are working ranches, depending on what part of the country, you're in. All of them provide opportunities for private capital, to be commingled with public and philanthropic dollars to create something larger than what we have had in the past. And it is that convergence that I think will define this third era of the environmental movement. And that, to me is the most exciting thing and frankly, the most optimistic things about land conservation.

Nic 
It's a great answer.

Laura  
Thank you. So you mentioned that you started the Conservation Fund when they were 14 employees and you've mentioned a lot of work and a lot of areas where you do conservation. So how many employees are you up to now?

Larry Selzer  
Well, we are just over 200 employees and we have people in about 23 or 24 states. We don't have the traditional state offices. If you will, and it's a more fluid operation than that. But we do work across all 50 states, not internationally, just the United States. We think there's more than enough work to be done right here at home. The interesting thing is because we're using our money and we're using other people's money bridge financing for public agencies, for example, us a relatively small staff for a national organization can punch way above its weight. So if you think about the output of the Conservation Fund over the last 37 years, we have now protected almost 9 million acres of land across the 50 states, almost $9 billion worth of investment. And these lands are generating significant economic benefit to rural communities. They're not just pretty places for people from the metropolitan areas to visit these lands provide jobs and a tax base for rural communities, which is essential if we're going to make sure that we have political support across the entire country good for contribution in the future. So a relatively small staff just over 200 people, but outsized impact, and that's the model that we like a low gross high net model, if you will, where everybody is really punching above their

Laura 
weight. Nice. Can you give a short plug for career seekers on the types of people you're looking for and how they can stand out in trying to make their way into a career at the Conservation Fund or something like the Nature Conservancy?

Larry Selzer  
Well, I would say that in the past, the search image might have looked a little different. Of course, every nonprofit has core functions that they need highly qualified people, whether it's in fundraising or marketing, and then finance and legal and all of that, for the Conservation Fund, where our core mission is land conservation. We're particularly interested in people who understand how to buy land, and how to work with landowners. It's a specific set of skills that allows you to visit with landowners of all stripes in all geographies, and essentially enjoy the bottomless cup of coffee at their kitchen table as they talk about their hopes and dreams for land that maybe has been in their family for four or five generations. And we're looking for people who have real estate skills, but frankly, who have the ability to engage at a very human level with people all across the country.

Unknown Speaker 
Now
_____________________
Larry Selzer 
And we're looking for people who have real estate skills, but frankly, who have the ability to engage at a very human level with people all across the country. Now interestingly, as our working Forest Fund has grown, we also are looking for people who understand what it means to be in the forest products industry, to do a forest management plan to work with loggers and contractors, and that's a different set of skills, but one that is equally important right now and I'll say one last thing, the conservation fund because our mission we have this dual purpose mission of conservation
_________________
Larry Selzer 
Our mission we have this dual purpose mission of conservation and economic development. We are uniquely positioned to work with industry when they are trying to build large infrastructure projects. We understand the pressures the bass, we understand the impact that those infrastructure projects like pipelines and transmission lines, solar and wind farms. We understand the impact that those investments have on natural resources on land. You simply can't put 1000 mile pipeline together without crossing endangered species habitat or weapons or rivers. And we understand how to work with them to help mitigate the impact and about 10 years ago, we launched a specific business to work with large infrastructure companies to help them mitigate the impact of their investments. We are not helping them get permits that's between the infrastructure company and the regulating agency. But if a permit is issued, and there will be unavoidable impacts to regulated resources or resources that we care about, then the Conservation Fund is uniquely positioned to help deliver that mitigation. I'll give you an example. The transmission line which actually predated the Appalachian Trail, which went from the coal fields to Pennsylvania, to the urban centers in New York and the surrounding area, needed to be upgraded to a 500 kilovolt line, which meant that the towers had to be raised so that you could get greater separation between the electrical transmission wires so they wouldn't arc and fail. Well, this transmission line predated the Appalachian Trail. Now the Appalachian Trail is there and yet raising the towers we'll have a view shed impact on people that want to enjoy the Appalachian Trail. That is an unavoidable impact for which the companies involved had to provide mitigation. We worked with them to develop and deliver a mitigation solution that was in the 10s of millions of dollars. And as a result we were able to acquire for the Appalachian Trail and the cherry Valley National Wildlife Refuge 1000s and 1000s of acres that otherwise they would have no funding to do their job with. And so that's a unique opportunity to accelerate land contribution using private capital, not taxpayer money that is spent to mitigate unavoidable impacts and we are very excited as this country continues to invest in infrastructure, whether it's renewable energy or anything else. There are opportunities to accelerate land conservation, and we're poised to work with the companies and the public agencies to implement that.

Nic 
Certainly great and it's a perfect segue. We actually we have a couple of questions from our audience for you. And I think you did a really good job talking about how you work with national and federal governments, which is really neat, or the federal government, I mean, but other than funding, what do you need from the federal government to do your work? Well,

Larry Selzer 
if you are buying land on behalf of a federal agency, which might be the National Park Service, the National Forest System, the National Wildlife Refuge System, they have particular requirements to make sure that any project done with federal dollars is done, right. That is done with integrity, that it is transparent and that the taxpayers can see what how the project was done and what they get for their money. And, as you might surmise, over time, the processes that govern federal dollars often get complicated, and that can be a barrier to implementation. And right now, I think we have processes that need to be cleaned up a little bit, particularly around how properties are appraised and appraisals are, how we establish the value of properties, and then how third party facilitators. That's what we're called in the technical jargon nonprofits or third party facilitators, how we are engaged in the process from top to bottom. All of these things are things that can easily be fixed, but it's housecleaning, I would say that needs to be done every so often. Right now we have this unusual situation with the passage of the great american outdoors act, where we have more money than we have ever had for contribution. And yet, we can't move fast enough to get on the ground and deliver the contribution impact. And so we are working with our federal agency partners to make that process more efficient, more effective so that we can deliver for the American people.

Laura 
That is awesome. I'm just I'm falling in love with your mission of your organization, as you talk. You mentioned new technologies and infrastructure projects and then the subsequent influx of funds from private companies. Are you doing your work with offshore wind projects?

Larry Selzer 
Well, that's a great question. We talked about it often. We don't work in the marine environment, even though that's where I started my career and I have a passion for the marine environment. But our business model is primarily about land and buying land for permanent conservation. However, offshore wind has the same challenge that onshore wind or solar has, and it has to do with how you get the energy to the grid. So if you think about how the energy grid in this country was developed over decades, it really fallen a north south pattern, essentially follow rivers because cities were built along rivers. Well, we have a very robust electrical transmission system that runs north south. Now, if you think about renewables, they're out in the middle of nowhere to get the energy to the grid so it can't be delivered. You have to run transmission line. East West. That's where all of the emphasis right now onshore is that requires mitigation. If you think about offshore, you still have to get that energy from the off shore turbine onto land and into the grid. And that may represent an opportunity for mitigation where those lines come onshore. And so we're looking at that trying to see whether or not there's something we can do that would relate to coastal resilience and coastal protection, particularly in the face of climate change. with sea level rise. We think there may be an opportunity and we're excited by that.

[Carbon Capture]

Laura 
Well, let's get one audience question in here. This is sort of a new thing that we're doing. So those of you listening we are taking if you're paying attention to our news feed and you see who our future guests are going to be feel free to shoot us a question you might like to ask them. But we have one here that is are you working to quantify the economic impact of ecosystem services? To measure conservation from angles that aren't purely scientific, which might help bring those who may not innately understand climate change into the fold through some other perspectives?

Larry Selzer 
We absolutely are. And the clearest example of that right now is the role that forests play in sequestering carbon and the carbon off set market which started in California in this country, and now is spreading all across the country, frankly, all across the globe. And as companies and in basters try and get to a net zero, meaning they offset entirely their carbon emissions. Forests represent an opportunity for them to invest in these forest based carbon offsets. They fall under the umbrella of natural solutions. to climate change. And right now a tonne of carbon through a forest offset is selling for about $15 a tonne. In the voluntary market. There's a regulated market and then a voluntary market and at $15 a ton that is adding value to the forest that prior to our understanding of climate change did not exist. In other words we valued for us for the wood products they provided or the recreational benefits, but now we can also value them for their climate change impacts. Similarly, many communities get their drinking water from forested areas. Forests are where rain sinks into the ground and recharges the underground storage areas called aquifers. The City of Raleigh, North Carolina has imposed an additional payment on their water bills, which can then be used to buy forests so that the recharge areas are protected. That's a very significant way for them to invest in their future make sure that they will have clean water for their residents in the future. And these are the types of ecosystem services that we're very excited about. We think it brings new opportunities for people to invest in conservation, this convergence of the free enterprise system and the environmental movement. And we'll see more of this I think associated with things like biological diversity in the future. It's not there yet but I think it will be and recreational access so clearly, we need to value our natural resources for things other than either just wildlife or just science. The environmental movement in this country for almost 100 years was designed around protecting land from people. I think going forward in this era of convergence. We need to protect land for people and bringing people into the economic mix and communities into the success of land conservation. is a critical piece of that.

Laura  
That's amazing. I love everything. That's right. For the flag, the connectivity of the history, where it's going in the future, all of the different types of conservation projects you're working on. But I have to ask, we're getting close to end of our time. There's a project that you worked on or are working on, and about re introducing elk into West Virginia. I did not if you asked me in a trivia question. Are there elk in West Virginia? I would have said no. So tell us about that project.

Larry Selzer 
Up until very recently, you would have been correct in saying no, but historically, l existed all across the Appalachian states. They were native Eastern forest elk were native to the eastern United States. They were extirpated or made extinct by hunting, and so they were absent for over 100 years from the eastern forest. In recent times several of the Appalachian states including Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Tennessee began reintroducing elk not only for their ecological values, but for their economic value. It is just unbelievably exciting to go and watch elk bugle in the fall and see these magnificent animals up close and personal and watchable wildlife is one of the fastest growing economic aspects of conservation. For example, the state of Pennsylvania, which has one of the largest elk herds in the eastern United States, is now building out an entire economic ecosystem of hospitality and guide services. And new restaurants around watching elk and they built a brand new visitor center the Health Visitor Center in North Central Pennsylvania, which now receives more than four times the visitors ship annually of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Falling Waters. So you think about this as an economic driver? Well, West Virginia used to have oil and yet they did not have a land base where they could reintroduce elk and so using our working Forest Fund, we acquired 32,000 acres from a private timber company that was ideal for reintroducing elk. The State of West Virginia then received 250 elk from Kentucky, quarantine them to make sure that they were healthy, and then release them on the 32,000 acres of land that we had acquired for the state. It's a combination of deep hardwood forests and open grasslands precisely the kind of habitat that elk like and heard is now growing and a watchable wildlife industry will grow alongside it. And ultimately, the when the herd reaches a certain level, there'll be hunting opportunities which also generate significant economic benefit to these rural communities. So this is an example of how conservation can drive new economic development, even where people didn't think it was possible.

Nic 
That it is so. So cool. I'm really glad you got to highlight that. And I hate to say we have to wrap up here. Like we are running out of time, I have to ask you, we usually do have one fun question in here. We've been going through quite a bit for you so so what do you do? For fun? What do you do when you're not spending your hours working on all these things?

Larry Selzer  
Well, fortunately, there's almost perfect alignment between what I do for work and and what I do for fun. I love to be outdoors. I love to fly fish. And I love to bird hunt. I love to bird watch and sounds like that's a an oxymoron. But I grew up bird watching and obviously I'm not hunting the migratory birds and just being out in nature and understanding in an intimate level, how things work together and what we can do as human beings not to destroy the the environmental world around us but to support and encourage the environmental world around us. And to me, that's the best thing. I've had an opportunity to get my kids outdoors and my wife loves to be out there. She is a great fisherman, a fisher person. So fortunately, that's where I find the respite and solace and just lucky that it aligns with what I do from my day job.

Nic 
Yeah, I'm glad it has to be really funny for the queen to race cars and but no, I know we can I know exactly what you mean. And that's so great. We've had a really great conversation with you before we let you go. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?

Larry Selzer  
The only thing that I would leave you with and I hope that the listening audience will take this to heart is that conservation is all hands on deck proposition. It cannot be successful and if it's if it's just a handful of us working on contribution, we need open space in Yellowstone and we need open space in Atlanta and Houston and Philadelphia. And as more and more Americans move to our urban centers and they lose the opportunity to be in nature. We lose the connection that will translate into political support and financial support. And so the environmental movement needs to embrace the reconnecting of all Americans to our natural world. And I hope that everybody listening in their daily lives will think about ways that they can do that. They can support candidates, they can donate money, that they can volunteer in ways that bring all of us closer to our natural world.

Nic 
Perfect. Thank you, Larry, so much for being here. If people do want to reach out and get in touch with you to where can they do,

Larry Selzer 
they can go on the web, www.conservation fund.org. And we would love to hear from people and no matter what their interests are, and see if we can find a way to engage with them.

Nic 
Perfect. Thank you so much for your time.

Larry Selzer 
Well, thank you. It's been a real pleasure.

[Outro]

Laura 
Thanks, Larry. That's our show. Thank you, Larry, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye.

Nic
See you everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai