As frugal, outdoorsy newlyweds in the 1960s, Jack and Laura Dangermond spent their honeymoon camping along California's iconic Central Coast before heading inland to Yosemite. The two grew especially fond of a stretch of coastline west of Santa Barbara, with sweeping vistas of the Pacific Ocean.
Now the Dangermonds are donating $165 million to ensure that one of the last pristine stretches of California's coast that remains in private hands, just up the road from where they camped, is preserved forever. The gift to The Nature Conservancy is the largest the organization has ever received and was earmarked for the purchase the 25,000-acre Bixby Ranch, which straddles Point Conception in Santa Barbara County.
The donation by the Dangermonds, the billionaire founders of Esri, the privately-held software company that essentially invented the digital map, is also the ninth largest philanthropic gift of 2017, according to a database compiled by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
"We both fell in love with it," says Jack Dangermond, 71. "It is a kind of landscape which is not only scenic and beautiful, it is also home to over 50 rare and endangered species." The richness of the ecosystem spans both the land and the sea, as Point Conception marks the spot where warm currents from Mexico and cold currents from Alaska meet and borders marine preserves. "When we where there last Sunday, coincidentally there was a whale , hundreds of porpoises, diving birds and gulls, just offshore," Dangermond adds.
The ranch has been privately owned and was once considered for development. It includes 8 miles of coastline, windswept bluffs and hillsides and valleys rich with California live oaks. It is home to 39 threatened or "special status" species, including 14 that are considered endangered, as well as Chumash artifacts and dozens National Historic Register sites. Sitting at the intersection of Northern and Southern California, its habitat has elements of both regions. "That's a pretty rare thing in California," Dangermond says. "It deserves to be preserved."
"It’s amazing that we are able to protect this place," says Mike Sweeney, executive director of the Conservancy's California chapter, the organization's largest. "When we look at incredible places like this we get excited. The price tag makes it difficult. Without Jack and Laura, this place would not be a preserve. That speaks to the power of individual action to make things happen."
The Dangermonds, lifelong residents of Redlands, Calif., where Esri is headquartered, have a decades-long connection to environmental causes. Jack Dangermond's parents owned a nursery. He and Laura met in high-school and went off together to Cal Poly, where he studied environmental science and landscape architecture. After graduate school, while working in a computer graphics lab that had developed rudimentary software maps at Harvard, Dangermond pioneered the idea of applying spatial analysis to environmental challenges. Shortly after in 1969, the couple founded Esri, originally the Environmental Systems Research Institute, which long before the birth of Google or Mapquest helped to create a multi-billion dollar industry called geographic information systems around digital maps.
"Deep in our DNA is our own set of values about wanting to work in landscape architecture ... understanding the landscape, geography and planning," Dangermond says. (Forbes covered the remarkable rise and resilience of Esri in its February 2016 issue.)
The Dangermonds have quietly given to philanthropic causes -- "a little here, a little there," he says -- over the years. They hope their gift to the Conservancy -- their largest by far and their most public yet -- they will inspire others to work to preserve rapidly eroding natural habitats.
Much of the Dangermonds' philanthropy in the past has been channeled through Esri, which has given free digital mapping tools to not-for-profits, including scores of environmental organizations. In 2015, they received the prestigious Audubon Medal, from the National Audubon Society, whose past recipients included Ted Turner, Rachel Carson and Jimmy Carter.
"Since Esri’s earliest days, environmental non-profits have benefitted most from the Dangermond’s passion for conservation," says David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society. "Thanks to ESRI’s conservation tools, non-profits and developers or oil companies can all look at shared visions and try to find solutions. That’s just so rare in the world."
The Conservancy's Sweeney says he hopes the bond between his organization and the Dangermonds will lead to further collaboration.
"They are thinkers about tech’s application to conservation," Sweeney says. Together, Esri and the Conservancy will explore "what kinds of new approaches to conservation can we pursue using technology, and what new techniques we can use to manage nature preserves," he says.
The Bixby Ranch's neighbors include Vandenberg Air Force Base to the north, and Hollister Ranch, a stunning enclave of relatively pristine land dotted with luxury properties. When Bixby was sold for $140 million in 2007 to an investment group raising questions about its future, the Los Angeles Times described it in eloquent terms:
The 25,000-acre Santa Barbara landholding had been slumbering for nearly a century as a respected cattle operation, a rustic getaway for the Bixby heirs and their friends, a surfing spot of mystical isolation, a site of concern to archeologists and environmentalists, and a muse for artists and other casual visitors.
To many of them, the Bixby Ranch is the last perfect place in California. "The footprint of man is very light out here," says Bill Etling, a Santa Ynez Valley Realtor who grew up surfing the Bixby. "It's where you understand what California was all about before people ruined it."
"There's no place like it on this earth," says Santa Barbara County Supervisor Joni Gray, whose district includes the Bixby neighbor to the north, Vandenberg Air Force Base. "It's more beautiful than Yosemite or Yellowstone. It's the most beautiful place I've ever been."
Sweeney says that while access to Bixby will remain limited, the organization hopes to open it up to scientists and educational groups like it does with Santa Cruz Island offshore, which is roughly three-quarters owned by the Conservancy. As part of their gift, the Dangermonds are endowing a chair at the University of California Santa Barbara, to fund ongoing education and research associated with Bixby.
"About 50 years ago when we started Esri, we already had this vision for wanting to develop technology for conservation," Dangermond says. "We both still work full time and work like crazy, harder than most people do, running this organization ... It is still our passion. We like not only the company and what it does, but also the fact that it has been able to allow us to do this great thing."
