A New Approach to Conservation

Balancing Financial Return and Forestland Conservation

Forest Legacy Investments’ primary mission is to manage funds that offer an attractive investment while achieving conservation goals.  Most of the timberland investment properties that FLI targets are working forests that are of concern to conservation constituents such as a land trust or governmental organization. These groups often have conservation capital to contribute to a forestland purchase and FLI works with them to ensure that environmental goals can be achieved while addressing investment targets. For example, FLI may sell a conservation easement limiting development on the property to a land trust; this achieves an important environmental goal while making investors “whole.”
 
This approach to conservation not only accomplishes FLI’s environmental mission but also allows FLI access to timberland deals that may otherwise be unavailable. In the competitive timberland marketplace this is an important strategic benefit passed onto FLI’s investors.

The specific conservation strategies of FLI’s funds are largely dependent on the individual forestland property, market opportunity, and the fund investors, but all have the long-term health of our forests as an important goal.  FLI’s conservation plans are not only concerned about the next decade or two, but the next century.  Thus, most FLI funds ensure that future owners will maintain the level of conservation achieved by FLI.

Environmental goals that this approach can achieve include:

• FSC certified sustainable harvesting
• Permanent protection from development
• Watershed protection
• Habitat protection
• Providing buffer zones to sensitive habitats