A nonprofit environmental preservation organization may sound like the antithesis of a business entity, but the 6,700-acre Mohonk Preserve on the Shawangunk Ridge in Ulster County contradicts that assumption.
Mohonk Preserve is by acreage the largest nonprofit nature preserve in the state, and posits itself as a well-run business and a key contributor to the economy. It maintains that its research, education and preservation programs will be increasingly valuable contributors to sustainable development in what are shaping up as challenging ecological times, which may threaten economic staples from maple syrup to skiing.
With an annual operating budget of just over $2 million and assets of $15.7 million, according to the Mohonk Preserve”™s 2007 annual report, the preserve has 12,000 members whose annual dues and contributions provided 80 percent of funding, with the other 12 percent derived from dividends and about 8 percent coming from grants.
As much as he loves the land of rare dwarf pine barrens, endangered species, astounding vistas, and some of the finest rock climbing pitches in the Eastern United States, Mohonk Preserve executive director Glenn D. Hoagland sounds proudest of the business savvy of the organization and the economic contributions it makes to the region.
“Bringing the number of people we do to the community is a tremendous benefit to the entire area,” Hoagland said, speaking recently to a group of reporters invited to the Mohonk Preserve visitors center in Gardiner.
The Contribute 200 guide to nonprofits ranks Mohonk Preserve as the seventh best overall environmental nonprofit in the New York-New Jersey region, Hoagland said.
The preserve employs 45 rangers, researchers and other support staff. Some 150,000 visitors each year trek to the ridges, forests meadows, ponds and streams of the unique ecosystem atop and adjacent the Shawangunk Ridge that borders several communities in the Wallkill and Rondout valleys.
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The preserve is the northern end of some 30,000 protected contiguous acres bordered by Minnewaska State Park and including Sam”™s Point Preserve at the southern end of the protected zone, all part of what the Nature Conservancy calls “one of the 75 last great places on Earth.”
Hoagland said that using standard multipliers of either three or six dollars for every $1 directly coming from the preserve, the organization injects millions of dollars into the economy, through employee salaries and also through the spin-off spending by tens of thousands of visitors who may buy gas or climbing gear and who visit the restaurants and shops in the valleys around the ridge. “We know we”™re a pretty important anchor for ecotourism around the Shawangunks,” Hoagland said.
Hoagland used the emerging term, “green collar jobs,” to describe a key economic sector in the northern Hudson Valley, with its numerous ecotourism attractions, as well as ecological management connected with those sites and academia and industry researching new high-tech energy options. There is also increasing numbers of small organic farms operating in the area taking advantage of relatively cheap and abundant acreage near massive potential markets.
“Green collar jobs are one of the fastest growth sectors of the economy, especially around here,” Hoagland said. The preserve is part of a synergy that helps spur green collar jobs, he said.
The preserve is separate from the for-profit Mohonk Mountain House, a hotel on the national register of historic places, but both were founded by the Smiley family, who originally created the Mountain House as a balm to body and spirit and as it turns out, a boon to science. The Smiley family has done observation on species and habitat and collected 115 years of daily weather data that has over time become an unique and invaluable resource of baseline data for scientists studying climate change.
Paul Huth, research director at the Daniel Smiley Research Center at Mohonk Preserve, said that he sees threats to flora as a prime concern, especially the potential loss of sugar maple trees and the resulting collapse of the maple syrup industry in the Northeast. He also cited the economic effects new types of invasive plant, insect and animal species would have on the bottom line of agriculture endeavors.
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But Smiley said the most immediate payoff from decades of research is “41,064 straight days of diligent weather data observations.” He said research and record keeping show that while the ice age 14,000 years ago had temperatures roughly 4 degrees lower than norm, the average temperatures now, as measured in the last 113 years are 2.7 degrees higher than when record keeping started at Mohonk.
Huth said possible outcomes defy easy prognostication, but said regional planners and construction engineers need to be aware changing climate is increasingly leading to extreme events. Thus, in sizing culverts, for example, or raising structures above flood threats, the region is likely to move between extremes and increasingly exceed past norms by large margins.
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