The David and Lucille Packard Foundation has gone far beyond its original goal to save 250,000 acres of California land from development, and has done it in half the time. To celebrate, the Packard Foundation has announced a new, more ambitious goal for its Conserving California Landscapes Initiative.
The $175-million conservation initiative had a five-year schedule to set aside a quarter-million acres of farm land, open space and wildlife habitat. The foundation has actually obtained 327,000 acres since 1998, spending just $96.2 million on land primarily in the Sierra Nevada, Central Valley and central coast regions. This total is equal to 10 times the size of San Francisco.
Packard officials will continue with a new goal of 500,000 acres by March, 2003 -- double their original target.
The foundation was able to meet its goal ahead of schedule and within its budget due to help from several other sources, including Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, which contributed a combined $244.7 million to the effort, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reports.
Jeanne Sedgwick, director of Packard's conservation program, said that while the foundation’s efforts will help curb sprawl, the state needs a permanent public fund of at least $1 billion to preserve an additional 5 million acres. The legislature is expected to study such a plan during next year’s session.
"Development will happen," Sedgwick told the Mercury News. "But we need to figure out where the sensitive landscapes are. Where is our water coming from? Where are the places people go to renew themselves? And we need to preserve those places. Growth is going to happen. It just needs to happen in the right places."
The Los Altos-based foundation was established by Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard. It is now America's second-largest such philanthropic organization, with assets of $15 billion. The Packard Foundation will give an estimated $500 million this year to arts, environmental, family-planning and science causes.
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