Nonprofit News and Comment

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Most City Parks Earn Solid Marks, With Some Lagging.” By Lisa W. Foderaro. New York Times. October 30, 2011. On their new report cards, New York City’s large parks turn out to be solid performers, earning a respectable B average. The grades, to be given out on Monday in a new study from New Yorkers for Parks, an independent advocacy group, nevertheless show some room for improvement, including the maintenance of drinking fountains and lawns. The group, in its first assessment of large park properties, looked at 45 parks, from 20 to 500 acres, in all five boroughs. Within each borough, however, there were sometimes jarring disparities in park quality. New Yorkers for Parks said that the biggest factor in those discrepancies was not differing income levels around the parks or a conservancy group with fund-raising muscle, but the ability to turn out volunteers to care for a park. In Harlem, for instance, Morningside Park, whose 30 acres stretch from West 110th to 123rd Streets, scored an 89, earning praise in particular for its well-maintained pathways, playgrounds and courts. Not far away, the 20-acre Marcus Garvey Park, at Madison Avenue and 120th Street, received a 69, with points deducted for broken benches and remote paths flecked with condoms and syringes. Morningside Park has a particularly strong “friends” group, with more than 100 industrious volunteers. Friends of Morningside Park, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last week, raised a modest $23,000 last year. But it organized more than a dozen events this year in which local residents turned out to plant bulbs and perform other chores. New Yorkers for Parks said that if one thread ran through the most successful parks it was just such a volunteer network. “It’s really human hands and labor,” said Alyson Beha, director of research, planning and policy for New Yorkers for Parks. “What we can tell for the most part is that parks with active volunteer groups have overall better maintenance than ones without.”

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Preservation, not profit, takes precedence at Big Horn Mine in the San Gabriels; The mine, perched on Mt. Baden-Powell, still holds an estimated 262,000 ounces of gold. It’s also a refuge for wildlife — and soon it will be transferred to the U.S. Forest Service.” By Louis Sahagun. Los Angeles Times. October 22, 2011. The Big Horn Mine, perched on a mountainside overlooking the headwaters of the San Gabriel River, still holds an estimated 262,000 ounces of gold in its quartz bedrock. At current prices, that haul would be worth more than $430 million. The wild country surrounding the mine, framed by alpine peaks and watered by snowmelt running through wrinkled canyons and ancient pine forests, is a refuge for bears, mountain lions and endangered Nelson’s bighorn sheep. Within a few days, preservation will trump economics when the 277-acre parcel is handed over to the public. The transfer of title to the U.S. Forest Service will cap six years of arduous negotiations by the nonprofit Wilderness Land Trust, which acquires unprotected private land and returns it to the people. And, trust president Reid Haughey reported with a hint of satisfaction, taxpayers got this slice of paradise for a bargain price: $2 million. “At 277 acres, this is a relatively small transaction,” he said, standing knee-deep in sage and prickly yuccas on a promontory near the mine’s long-abandoned ore mill. “But the value of adding it to the surrounding wilderness for future generations is significant.” The mine on the eastern flank of 9,399-foot Mt. Baden-Powell was first prospected in 1859. In its heyday in the 1930s, Big Horn Mine supported a community of cabins, machine shops and a post office serving the 30 workers who operated its steam-powered rock crushers and trucked ore down the mountain for processing. Permits to mine gold were valid until just a few years before the land trust — with $125,000 in private donations and a long-term loan of $825,000 — bought the property from a private mining company in 2007. It was ultimately sold to the Forest Service for $2 million. “We moved quickly to prevent the land from being marketed for its mineral resources and potential as a mountain retreat,” Haughey said. “When we bought the mine, gold was selling for $350 an ounce. Today, it sells for about five times that much.”

“Record $20 Million Gift to Help Finish the High Line Park.” By Lisa W. Foderero. New York Times. October 26, 2011. Many visitors to the High Line, the popular park that wends above street level on the West Side of Manhattan, stop at its northern terminus and peer wistfully through a chain-link fence at the as-yet unreclaimed half-mile segment to the north. Until this week, the nonprofit conservancy that operates the High Line still needed to raise $85 million to finish the park and maintain it. On Wednesday night, the conservancy took a major step toward that goal when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a $20 million gift to the High Line from the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation. The gift, which will help build up the park’s endowment and pay for the design of the last section, is the single largest donation ever made to a New York City park, according to city officials. It follows two previous donations totaling $15 million to the High Line from Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and Expedia, and his wife, the designer Diane von FurstenbergThe High Line is an unusual public-private partnership. The city paid most of the construction costs of the first two sections (the second opened earlier this year), which together run from Gansevoort to 30th Streets. But Friends of the High Line, the conservancy that rallied to save the railway from demolition and raised money for its transformation into a park, assumed full responsibility for the cost of the operations from the start. With three million annual visitors, 10 times what the founders of the conservancy initially envisioned, wear and tear, as well as educational programming, is a constant challenge for the 60-member staff. Annual operating costs for the park come to $3 million.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Preservation, not profit, takes precedence at Big Horn Mine in the San Gabriels The mine, perched on Mt. Baden-Powell, still holds an estimated 262,000 ounces of gold. It’s also a refuge for wildlife — and soon it will be transferred to the U.S. Forest Service.” By Louis Sahagun. Los Angeles Times. October 22, 2011. The Big Horn Mine, perched on a mountainside overlooking the headwaters of the San Gabriel River, still holds an estimated 262,000 ounces of gold in its quartz bedrock. At current prices, that haul would be worth more than $430 million. The wild country surrounding the mine, framed by alpine peaks and watered by snowmelt running through wrinkled canyons and ancient pine forests, is a refuge for bears, mountain lions and endangered Nelson’s bighorn sheep. Within a few days, preservation will trump economics when the 277-acre parcel is handed over to the public. The transfer of title to the U.S. Forest Service will cap six years of arduous negotiations by the nonprofit Wilderness Land Trust, which acquires unprotected private land and returns it to the people. And, trust president Reid Haughey reported with a hint of satisfaction, taxpayers got this slice of paradise for a bargain price: $2 million. “At 277 acres, this is a relatively small transaction,” he said, standing knee-deep in sage and prickly yuccas on a promontory near the mine’s long-abandoned ore mill. “But the value of adding it to the surrounding wilderness for future generations is significant.”

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“When the Uprooted Put Down Roots.” By Patricia Leigh Brown. New York Times. October 9, 2011. At the Saturday farmer’s market in City Heights, a major portal for refugees, Khadija Musame, a Somali, arranges her freshly picked pumpkin leaves and lablab beans amid a United Nations of produce, including water spinach grown by a Cambodian refugee and amaranth, a grain harvested by Sarah Salie, who fled rebels in Liberia. Eaten with a touch of lemon by Africans, and coveted by Southeast Asians for soups, this crop is always a sell-out. Among the regular customers at the New Roots farm stand are Congolese women in flowing dresses, Somali Muslims in headscarves, Latino men wearing broad-brimmed hats and Burundian mothers in brightly patterned textiles who walk home balancing boxes of produce on their heads. New Roots, with 85 growers from 12 countries, is one of more than 50 community farms dedicated to refugee agriculture, an entrepreneurial movement spreading across the country. American agriculture has historically been forged by newcomers, like the Scandinavians who helped settle the Great Plains; today’s growers are more likely to be rural subsistence farmers from Africa and Asia, resettled in and around cities from New York, Burlington, Vt., and Lowell, Mass., to Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego. With language and cultural hurdles, and the need to gain access to land, financing and marketing, farm ownership for refugees can be very difficult. Programs like New Roots, which provide training in soil, irrigation techniques and climate, “help refugees make the leap from community gardens to independent farms,” said Hugh Joseph, an assistant professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts, which advises 28 “incubator” farms representing hundreds of small-scale producers.

“Privately Owned Park, Open to the Public, May Make Its Own Rules.” By Lisa W. Foderaro. New York Times. October 13, 2011. Zuccotti Park, the half-acre plaza in Lower Manhattan now synonymous with Occupy Wall Street, exists in a strange category of New York parkland, identified by a seeming oxymoron: a privately owned public space. The park was established in a wave of development that spurred corporate plazas after changes were made to the city’s zoning laws in the early 1960s. The laws generally give real estate developers zoning concessions in exchange for public space. There are now at least 520 such parks, arcades and plazas in New York City, both indoors and out, providing a total of 3.5 million square feet of space. Zuccotti is unusual in that it does not adjoin the 54-story office tower, 1 Liberty Plaza, that spawned it. Rather, it is bounded on all four sides by streets: Broadway, Trinity Place, and Cedar and Liberty Streets. And while the developer did not win the right to build a larger structure in exchange for the park, it was given leeway on certain height and setback restrictions, according to Jerold S. Kayden, a lawyer and professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University. Perhaps most important, from the perspective of a long-term protest like Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park — unlike city-owned parks — is open 24 hours a day. Private parks and plazas that were developed under the original zoning rules governing them are generally open around the clock, while those created under more recent rules may close from dusk to dawn. About half of the privately owned plazas are required to be open 24 hours a day, according to the Department of City Planning. By contrast, the city’s parks all have curfews: the latest is 1 a.m.; a number close much earlier. All playgrounds close at dusk, and some parks in Queens have curfews as early as 9 p.m. So an encampment like the one at Zuccotti Park would be impossible in a city park, where structures like tents are prohibited without a permit. “The city had a policy for encouraging commercial developers to create open space in exchange for more height,” said Mitchell L. Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University. “But until now, no one has thought about the issue of what the rules are. This has highlighted one of the gaps in New York’s planning system.”

“Park Rules Scrutinized.” By Eliot Brown. Wall Street Journal. October 15, 2011. Casting a wary eye on the four-week-old Occupy Wall Street encampment, a group representing some of the city’s most influential landlords plans to ask the city to revamp the rules governing privately owned parks, including removing a requirement that they be open 24 hours a day. “We’re going to be clearly recommending to the city that there need to be some changes,” Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, said Friday. “If you can say that the plazas are closed between 1 and 5 a.m., I’m not sure who that’s harming.” REBNY has yet to draw up specifics. But the effort signals a growing concern in some of the city’s most powerful circles that there is no clear path to ending the protest in Zuccotti Park. The park is one of more than 500 privately owned but public spaces that developers created in the city in exchange for building rights. It’s owned by Brookfield Office Properties Inc. but open around-the-clock to the public as long as visitors abide by the rules. It appeared that an eviction was imminent Friday after Brookfield said it would begin cleaning the park and allowing protesters to return only if they didn’t erect tents and sleep on the ground. But political pressure and criticism from protesters mounted on Brookfield, which faced calls to let the demonstrations continue. Hours before a showdown with the protesters and their allies was expected to take place, the landlord aborted the plan. Other landlords have watched the experience of Brookfield with trepidation. Citing health and liability concerns, many have privately worried whether such similar protests would be possible at their own plazas. The plazas are a common sight throughout Manhattan, a gift of city zoning rules that allow developers to build more office space if they also construct a public space.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“The Self-Sufficient Office Building.” By Bryn Nelson. New York Times. October 4, 2011. One of the most highly anticipated development projects in the Pacific Northwest is still little more than a grid of concrete and rebar at the edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood here. When completed near the end of next year, though, the six-story office building may be the greenest commercial structure in the world. The building, the $30 million Bullitt Center at 1501 East Madison Street, is expected to set a new precedent for environmentally friendly design and construction and in doing so would reinforce Seattle’s reputation as a global leader in sustainable development. As the future home of the environmentally focused Bullitt Foundation and other like-minded tenants, the Bullitt Center is designed to produce as much electricity as it uses, making it both energy- and carbon-neutral. The building will supply and treat all of its own water, capturing rainwater in a 50,000-gallon underground cistern. And its construction will exclude items on a “red list” of hazardous materials like lead and cadmium, a stipulation that has required developers to compile a spreadsheet of 362 prohibited building components. If the Bullitt Center passes the self-sufficiency test after its first full year of occupancy, it will be certified as a “living building” by the International Living Future Institute, a group based in Seattle that has established a green building standard, called the Living Building Challenge, widely viewed as the world’s toughest. “The story is that this building is pushing the boundaries of performance in all categories, not just in one or two,” said Jason McLennan, the chief executive of both the certifying institute and the Cascadia Green Building Council, a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council that administers the better-known LEED rating system. “For this building type and this scale, it’s the first in the world to go this far.” Denis Hayes, the president and chief executive of the Bullitt Foundation and a national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970, said his foundation’s future home had benefited from an integrated design process involving architects, engineers, developers and contractors.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“In Wood Pulp Country, A New Plan For Conservation.” By Susan Sharon. Morning Edition/National Public Radio. September 30, 2011. Roxanne Quimby, here with Millinocket Lake guide Matt Polstein, wants to donate 70,000 acres of land to the National Park Service along with an endowment to manage what would be a national park in Maine’s North Woods. For more than a decade, there’s been talk of creating a new national park in the heart of the Maine woods. Most locals were opposed from the start, but as the economy here changes, opposition is softening. For generations, Maine’s North Woods have provided pulp for the state’s paper mills and created plenty of good jobs in an area with little other economic activity. But now the paper industry is struggling and a mill job is no longer a guarantee. It’s been three years since work stopped at the mill in Millinocket, Maine, and there are signs everywhere of the toll that’s taking: vacant storefronts; 50-percent-off signs; and on the block in front of the mill, several homes for sale, one with a handmade sign saying, “$25,000 as-is — make an offer.” Millnocket is known as the Magic City because it was carved out of the woods by lumberjacks almost overnight. But the area’s two paper mills have changed owners several times, including just this month. Both have recently been idle. Residents are crossing their fingers about going back to work, but the local unemployment rate stands at 21 percent. Millinocket Town Manager Eugene Conlogue, an opponent of the proposed national park, says residents are panicked over the economy. For Conlogue and others, distrust of the federal government and potential park restrictions on certain outdoor activities like timber harvesting are big concerns. “We don’t need preservationists here telling us how to keep our land and … keep us off the land,” he says. The national park is being proposed by Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of the natural products company Burt’s Bees. After selling the company, Quimby used her newfound fortune to buy up land in Maine’s North Woods from downsizing paper companies. Some local residents see her as a villain for closing off her land to hunting and snowmobiling — activities the paper companies have long allowed — and for taking it out of timber production.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Huge Yosemite trail project is latest example of parks philanthropy.” By Paul Rogers. San Jose Mercury-News. September 25, 2011. For the past five years, hundreds of workers with mules, chain saws and shovels have built new wooden foot bridges on Yosemite National Park’s backcountry hiking trails. They have rerouted popular paths to protect the roots of ancient sequoias in the park’s Mariposa Grove. And they have installed new signs, stone walls and rock staircases across the famed John Muir Trail. The $13.5 million job, which was completed this month, is the largest trail restoration project in Yosemite’s history. But most of the funding didn’t come from taxpayers; $10.5 million was paid for with private donations. In an era when federal and state budgets are stretched to the breaking point, donations are increasingly the lifelines in the maintenance of some of America’s most popular natural treasures. “Trails in Yosemite are the way people get to really enjoy the park, whether they are in the front country or backcountry wilderness,” said Mike Tollefson, president of the Yosemite Conservancy, a nonprofit group in San Francisco that funded the trail project. “The park service had gotten behind in maintaining those trails. We felt we could really help with that.” Similar donations are providing services that government once funded. Major national parks, including Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Acadia, have built visitor centers, education facilities and trails in recent years with private funds.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Public Garden’s greatest friend; Henry Lee steps down after 41 years of safeguarding Boston’s green spaces.” By Andrew Ryan. Boston Globe. May 4, 2011. Boston’s Public Garden hit bottom in the 1970s, when graffiti stained the statues, the bridge over the lagoon was crumbling, and sections of the iron fence were missing, like teeth knocked out of a smile. Alarmed by crime and drugs in the park, neighbors convinced a school teacher named Henry Lee to serve as the first chairman for the nascent Friends of the Public Garden. Thirty people gathered for the first meeting in Lee’s home on Mount Vernon Street. “He was told that this wouldn’t take much of his time,’’ said Eugenie Beal, a resident and longtime member. “But it did — for 41 years.’’ Today, after helping to build a $17 million, 2,500-member organization that has become a formidable guardian of the nation’s oldest green spaces, Lee will formally retire from the Friends, leaving a legacy of battles to protect the garden and its sister parks, the Boston Common and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. One of the group’s most dramatic achievements lies in what is not there: massive high rises along Boylston Street that would have cast shadows over the Public Garden and Common. Lee and the newly formed friends took on Mayor Kevin H. White’s administration and fought the Park Plaza development, which was scaled back significantly and pushed a block from the parks. As Lee takes the title of president emeritus, the organization is set up to last. Endowments will pay for upkeep of the restored sculptures, memorials, and fountains. The budget includes money for tree pruning and injections to combat Dutch elm disease. A capital fund-raising campaign has spearheaded major projects. Most importantly in recent years, the Friends have added part-time workers and a paid executive director, Elizabeth Vizza, who works full time and has taken over day-to-day operations. That represents a stark change from the first several decades, when Lee was the sole staff member. Friends joked that Lee’s Yankee thrift prevented him from hiring help, leaving him to lick the stamps when he wrote thank-you notes to donors.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“EPA, eco groups at odds in climate change case; Who has the right to make the rules: the government agency or a federal court?” By Mark Sherman. MSNBC/Associated Press. April 18, 2011. — The Obama administration and environmental interests generally agree that global warming is a threat that must be dealt with. But they’re on opposite sides of a Supreme Court case over the ability of states and groups such as the Audubon Society that want to sue large electric utilities and force power plants in 20 states to cut their emissions. The administration is siding with American Electric Power Co. and three other companies in urging the high court to throw out the lawsuit on grounds the Environmental Protection Agency, not a federal court, is the proper authority to make rules about climate change. The justices will hear arguments in the case Tuesday. The court is taking up a climate change case for the second time in four years. In 2007, the court declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. By a 5-4 vote, the justices said the EPA has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under that landmark law. The same reasoning applies to power plants. The administration says one reason to end the current suit is that the EPA is considering rules that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But the administration also acknowledges that it is not certain that limits will be imposed. At the same time, Republicans in Congress are leading an effort to strip the EPA of its power to regulate greenhouse gases. The uncertainty about legislation and regulation is the best reason for allowing the case to proceed, said David Doniger, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which represents Audubon and other private groups dedicated to land conservation.

“Quimby buys historic Lunksoos Camps on Penobscot.” By Nick Sambides Jr. Bangor Daily News. April 19, 2011. — Writer Henry David Thoreau once canoed the East Branch of the Penobscot River and might have stood on the land that conservationist Roxanne Quimby will turn into an artistic and scientific center, she announced Tuesday. Quimby’s purchase of the 13.8-acre Lunksoos Camps on Friday likely will have no immediate impact on almost all of the recreational access sportsmen previously enjoyed, said Mark Leathers, a forestry consultant Quimby employs. That includes the Interconnected Trail System snowmobile trail that runs through the property and the land’s boating access to the river. However, hunting might no longer be allowed on the property, Leathers said. He declined to say how much Quimby paid for the land. Originally built in 1881, the camps consist of a lodge and four cabins situated on the east side of the river, 10 miles west of Sherman Mills, and is accessible by road from Stacyville. “It complements the rest of her holdings because it provides a starting point on the east side of the river to the west side of the river and because it is a commercial property adjacent to her large land holdings,” Leathers said Tuesday. “Now we don’t have to worry about an incompatible user” buying the camps. Leathers called the camp a future retreat for writers and artists but a statement released by Quimby’s group, Elliotsville Plantation Inc., said the camps also will serve recreational, artistic and scientific pursuits, including hiking, canoeing, skiing, bird watching, and research.

ENVIRONMENT & CONSERVATION

“Students found climate nonprofit; Max Webster ’12 said that members of his group Climate Voices use the moral philosophy they learned in class to argue for their goals.” By David Burt. Yale Daily News. April 11, 2011. When Max Webster ’12 fled his home on the gulf coast of Mississippi in the face of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 with only a change of clothes, he had no idea that he would next see his house on television, collapsed amid the wreckage of the natural disaster. Webster presented his story Saturday at TEDx Nashville, an event where speakers across many fields share ideas about how to improve society, and explained how his experience led him to found a nonprofit organization last fall with other members of his Yale “Ethics and International Affairs” course. Webster’s nonprofit, “Climate Voices,” aims to raise awareness about how climate change affects people’s lives, particularly about instances of forced migration because of rising water levels, severe storms and erosion. “My charge became … to redefine the debate about climate change around the issue of human rights,” Webster said. Though Webster had often read about environmental issues before Katrina struck, he said seeing the suffering of the hurricane victims made him realize that climate change is a “human issue.” People argue about the causes of climate change and ways to mitigate the problem, but anyone can sympathize with the human victims of a crisis, Webster said. People in some nations already have to cope with the challenges of climate change, he said, and he hopes to make their “voices” heard around the world.