Saving the coast, 25,000 acres at a time

Unwilling to leave the land for development, a couple in California donated $165 million to The Nature Conservancy to ensure that a critically important piece of the coastline is preserved. National Geographic has a couple photos and reports that:

The land was once the Bixby Ranch, then later became the Cojo Jalama Ranches, a privately owned piece of coastal property that the LA Times once called "the last perfect place."

 James Fallows offers a lengthy piece in The Atlantic. Knowing the the donors, he got a personal sense of what this meant to them:

Much as the Rockefellers’ example is remembered now—or Carnegie’s with his libraries, or the Mellons’ and Fricks’ with their museums—the Dangermonds hope that in their smaller-scale way they can set an example others can refer to. “We would love to have 100 Dangermond Reserves,” he said. “But I’m not Carnegie. We’re not in the oil business. We can’t do this by ourselves. We’re telling the story to set an example of what others could do.”