Our Achievements

• Enabled protection of more than two million acres of land across the American West and Mexico.
• Led efforts that generated more than $26 billion in new public funding for water, land, and ocean conservation.
• Helped transform the effort to restore former commercial salt ponds along San Francisco Bay into a long-term, multi-billion-dollar, regional focus on adaptation to rising sea levels.
• Brokered landmark renewable energy development policy for the American West.
• Partnered with California to protect nearly 17 percent of the state’s offshore waters.
• Catalyzed transformation of the California state parks system to better serve diverse, young, and urban park visitors.
• Supported 30-plus commercial fisheries worldwide in achieving sustainability certification.

History

Resources Legacy Fund was created in 2000 to help carry out a five-year effort by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to protect at least 250,000 acres of ecologically valuable land in California while expanding the capacity and sophistication of local conservation groups and generating new policies and funding for conservation. RLF played a highly instrumental role in the program’s overwhelming success.

Nearly half a million acres of land eventually were protected, and Packard’s $175 million investment leveraged an additional $764 million. Decades later, our work continues to build public funding, new policy directions, and stronger constituencies for conservation. And we still aim to exceed donors’ expectations, whether they are major philanthropic institutions, individual donors, or something in between.