Maryland:
The Biophilia Foundation
61 Cornhill Street
Annapolis, MD 21401
Telephone: 410-315-9876
New Mexico:
The Pritzlaff Ranch
HC 68, Box 11A
Sapello, New Mexico 87745
Telephone: 505-454-8382
Background
The work of the Biophilia Foundation is premised on the belief that only private landowners’ efforts to restore and protect natural resources, especially wildlife habitat, will recover the living resources of the degraded lands and watersheds of our country. While economically sound working lands are essential to our well being, so is the health and proper function of the natural systems upon which our economy and our existence is based. Preserving the status quo is not sufficient. We must work to change our private land management regimen so that we consider our impact on water quality and wildlife, and improve current conditions. Government agencies and regulators can improve water quality and manage core refuges, parks and open space. Only private landowners’ efforts will be able to buffer and connect these existing core areas to allow long term recovery and survival of our living resources and the ecosystems that also sustain us.
The first Biophilia project, and one of its largest, is the Pritzlaff Ranch. This 3300 acre ranch, located just north of Las Vegas, New Mexico, was purchased in 1934 by Richard Pritzlaff. After Mr. Pritzlaff died in 1997, his wish that the land and its natural resources be restored and preserved was one of the reasons for the formation of the Biophilia Foundation. The ranch is now used to demonstrate the restoration and proper management of riparian buffers, pastures, and forests, and to extend these restoration and management techniques to other private landowners in the area. The ranch also provides ongoing collaborations with researchers, educators, and land conservation professionals, to further the art and science of land management and conservation.
Since 1999, the Foundation has also purchased large parcels of land in Maryland and Virginia, successfully restoring and preserving wildlife habitat on privately owned farms on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, and in Virginia helping to make more area contiguous with the Jefferson National Forest. These efforts have been successful due in large part to our collaboration with Chesapeake Wildlife Heritage (CWH). CWH is the only nonprofit conservation organization in the area working daily as a third party provider linking private landowners with under-utilized Farm Bill conservation programs. CWH designs and implements Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) projects that provide high quality wildlife habitats while paying landowners significant ground rents.
The Biophilia Foundation also supports the efforts of other organizations that conserve and restore biodiversity. The Foundation has partnered with Defenders of Wildlife to create the Living LandsProject. This project seeks to improve the effectiveness of land trusts in restoring and protecting habitat on private agricultural and forest land nationwide, and to challenge land trusts to do more than simply protecting scenic and open space values. Our hope is that this land trust capacity building will enhance private landowners’ opportunities to participate in biodiversity conservation once they realize that such effort is ecologically effective and financially viable, and a much needed compliment to a working landscape.
Other projects have been funded which will protect and expand habitat corridors, as well as defend threatened and endangered species from encroachment by economic and political interests hostile to their recovery. Also, a majority of the foundation’s monies have been invested in socially and environmentally sound assets, such as Pure Barnyard, Inc. Please see Current Projects for more complete descriptions of all our investments.
