Howard and Joyce Wood Make a $2 million Challenge Gift to the Nature Conservancy for Work in the Current River Watershed
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—April 27, 2007—The Nature Conservancy announces a $2 million challenge from Howard and Joyce Wood that will help conserve approximately 16,000 acres in the Current River watershed. With this gift, the Conservancy will work directly with private landowners to ensure sustainable forest management.
In critical areas, the Conservancy will acquire targeted lands when they come on the market and create permanent conservation easements on the land to sustain water quality, timber quality and critical natural features. The lands will then be publicly marketed to provide both conservation benefits and ongoing, sustainably managed forests.
This program generates multiple benefits, including retaining private land ownership and a tax base for local communities. In addition, this will sustain the water quality of globally unique and irreplaceable plants and animals as well as ensure the long-term survival of the vast woodlands in the Ozarks.
“Nowhere are ecology and economy more closely linked than in southeastern Missouri Ozarks in the watersheds of the Current, Eleven Point and Jacks Fork Rivers,” said Howard Wood. “Joyce and I wanted to take a leadership role to achieve this large-scale project with The Nature Conservancy. Our gift will encourage other private contributions from major donors by matching gifts dollar for dollar.”
Missouri Ozarks are home to an abundant population of significant plants, animals and natural communities against a backdrop of expansive, magnificent wooded hills that provide for a robust forest products industry.
“We can sustain our Ozark heritage, natural, economic and scenic, by developing strategies that will ensure the long-term health of the woodlands and the waters upon which they depend. With leadership from people like Howard and Joyce Wood, we can create a future where our children and grandchildren will canoe down streams full of fascinating fish and other aquatic creatures,” said Susan Heisel, state director for the Conservancy in Missouri.
Today, there is growing pressure on these critical Ozarks lands from inappropriate development or unsustainable land management practices for short-term financial gain at the expense of resource integrity and future commodity production. If this continues at the present rate, the watershed will be irreparably degraded within the next 10 to 20 years. While there are significant public lands in the Ozarks, like the Mark Twain National Forests, the majority of the landscape is in private ownership.
With this in mind, the Conservancy is committed to collaborative conservation emphasizing economically productive private-land ownership.
Nearly half of the world’s original forest cover has been destroyed, impacting forest dependent communities, plants and animals. The Conservancy is working with a wide range of partners and private landowners in strategic geographic areas, from the tropical forests in Indonesia to the Great Bear in Canada, to conserve and restore the world’s forests. The Missouri Ozarks region is a premier example of this crucial conservation work in the central U.S. region.
Howard and Joyce Wood of Bonne Terre, Mo., are leaders in the community. Howard Wood currently is chairman of Cequel III LLC, a cable television and communication towers business. He formerly headed Cencom Cable TV and was co-founder of Charter Communications. Wood served for six years as one of four commissioners appointed by the Governor to the Missouri Conservation Commission in 1997; as director of the Conservation Federation of Missouri; and as the Federation’s president from 1984 to 1985. Joyce Wood is a principal of Wood & Associates, a management consulting firm based in Bonne Terre. Both of the Woods serve on numerous corporate and community boards, both public and private. The Woods also spend considerable time managing their private companies and cattle ranch in Bonne Terre.
To learn more about the Wood Ozarks Conservation Buyer Fund, or to make a donation, please contact Gwen Shirkey, director of philanthropy for the Nature Conservancy in Missouri, at 314-968-1105.
The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.
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