Many other areas in the United States have been set aside for natural preservation. One of our favorites is Baxter State Park in Maine. The park was established by 28 donations of land, in trust, from former governor Percival Baxter between the years of 1931 and 1962 (eventually creating a park of over 200,000 acres). As governor, Baxter unsuccessfully campaigned for the direct purchase of this land by the state government. After leaving office, he bought the land himself for public use but outside formal government control. As a result, Baxter Park is not part of the Maine State Park system. Rather it is governed by the Baxter State Park Authority, consisting of the Maine Attorney General, the Maine Commissioner of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and Director of the Maine Forest Service.
There are now even greater initiatives occurring throughout the world to preserve land. One of the most ambitious and well-documented is the purchase and preservation of substantial land (equal in size to Yellowstone National Park) in a region of the West coast of South America known as Patagonia. A husband-and-wife team (Kristine and Douglas Tompkins), who had been very successful entrepreneurs in the United States, began purchasing this beautiful but vulnerable land before it could be altered with dams, tourism, and urban sprawl. Established as Conservacion Patagonica, this large-scale preservation initiative has attracted donors and environmental activists from across the world. The sportswear that many of us wear (“Patagonia”) was the original funding source for Conservacion Patagonica. We find an extraordinarily ambitious realization of the Generativity Three spirit in the work of the Tomkins and their preservation-oriented colleagues.
We can also turn to much more focused efforts at preservation of a natural state. Many of the zoos around the world are now in the business of preserving specific species from extinction. The Atlanta Zoo, like many others, goes even further by asking the general public to assist with the preservation. For instance, a visitor to this zoo can insert a credit card in a display adjacent to the gorilla exhibit that transfers money to an organization in Africa that is fighting to preserve the existing wild habitats of the gorilla. At an even more dramatic and potentially human-preservation level is the Svalbard project in Norway, where seeds from throughout the world are being stored and preserved in sub-freezing temperatures to ensure that humankind will always have access to the plants needed for our survival.
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