An Exciting Milestone: We’ve Issued 400 Conservation Loans

What Can Conservation Loans Can Help Achieve?

Lending partners the capital they need to do important, timely conservation projects has generated more access to green and open-space, the recovery of natural habitats, greater education programs and more. What does the impact of 400 conservation loans look like?

Greenspace and Equity

About half of our loans have expanded recreational outcomes for the public, with a particular focus on advancing access to parks, trails, and open space in urban areas. One example of this was our partnership with Amigos de los Rios in Los Angeles.

Several years ago, we began providing financing to the nonprofit as they worked to develop a 17-mile loop of parks and greenways connecting 10 cities and nearly 500,000 residents along the Río Hondo and San Gabriel Rivers. Since then, Amigos de los Rios and its partners have made strides towards this vision, known as the Emerald Necklace Vision Plan, to protect water resources while expanding parks and green infrastructure, particularly in underserved LA County communities that previously had little access to nature. They’ve converted abandoned lots, empty street medians and other neglected spots into pockets of green, making an “Emerald Necklace” for their community. We helped bring that vision to life with bridge financing needed for Amigos de los Rios to have sustained income while waiting for public reimbursement payments for its work.

Food and Farmland

Roughly one-third of our conservation loans have supported and strengthened food systems and small private farms. This ranges from helping local nonprofits acquire farmland to feed their communities, to supporting groups that provide veterans with agricultural therapy resources. But all these projects have one common denominator—they’re focused on LOCAL.

For example, one of our long-time partners in Massachusetts, the Kestrel Land Trust, knew that investing in local farms was the best way to help their community during the massive food shortages experienced during the COVID pandemic. In 2020, they reached out to us to help finance the protection of a local dairy farm, and used it to create a new “Food Bank Farm” with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. The 142-acre farm contracts with local farmers who grow organic vegetables for households at risk of hunger and to sell to schools in high-poverty school districts.

Habitat Restoration

Our loans have helped protect nearly 160,000 acres of land across the U.S. That’s bigger than Zion National Park. And while much of this land is utilized by people for food and recreational benefits like those above, it can also be used to secure critical wildlife habitat, specifically protecting migration corridors and species restoration efforts.

Our partner, the Southern Plains Land Trust, has used our support and financing to conserve critical habitat in Colorado. Our loans have helped finance the construction of a bison preserve, where the land trust is maintaining vast prairie grasslands for bison to roam. It also plans to begin reintroducing the highly endangered black footed ferret to the habitat.

We are proud to share these stories as an exceptional example of what each one of our 400 loans can do to support conservation.