“Evocative and inspirational.”
—Tom Brokaw
“The safest thing to do is invest in what we need, not what we want. Cache explains why.”
—Yvon Chouinard
founder, Patagonia
“Cache is, quite simply, brilliant.”
—C. S. "Buzz" Holling
co-inventor, ecological economics
“Cache reveals that success is possible and, by setting so high a standard, encourages us to take our part of protecting the only world we'll ever know.
—Thomas McGuane
author
“That Spencer is one of the most remarkable men I've ever met. He truly makes his dreams come true.”
—Patrick Dodson
winner, Sydney Peace Prize
A forty-year adventure inventing new ways of both conserving the environment and creating new businesses, working with remarkable people, and ultimately finding a new model of development to address the social, economic, and ecological issues of our day.
Spencer B. Beebe, described as a practical visionary, has a lifetime commitment to wilderness, community resilience, and pioneering new approaches to conservation and development from Alaska to Bolivia. He is a fly fisherman, backcountry pilot, and the founder of Ecotrust.
THE BOOK
Hardcover $29.95 | Softcover $19.95
Powell's, Amazon, local booksellers
E-BOOK
Kindle $1.99 | iPad/iPhone $0.99
Watch videos: YouTube
View photos: Flickr
Human/Nature, excerpt in Portland Monthly, 11/30/10
“The last thing on my mind even a few months earlier had been leaving The Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy was family, profession, and career. It had given me dream jobs running the Northwest Office in Portland (the six Northwestern states), the Western Regional Office in San Francisco (the 13 Western states), and then developing the International Program in Washington, D.C., from 1980 until 1986.
“During most of those years, land conservation — saving the “best of the rest (remaining natural ecosystems) and last of the least (endangered species habitat)” — was, in my view, the heart of conservation. I loved the private, entrepreneurial nature of the Conservancy’s game, the freedom I had enjoyed buying land, recruiting board members, hiring staff, and raising money to do it. And yet I was writing a letter of resignation that would ultimately lead to the departure of more than 50 of the Conservancy’s International Program 60-plus staff and five key national board members.
“Still, it was clear to me — at least in hindsight — that a more perceptive or objective observer might well have seen this coming, even years earlier. Certainly, this was not the first time I’d locked horns with the folks at the national office. Two previous occasions that stand out both involved ranches — one a dude ranch and the other an operating cattle ranch. In both cases, it came down to a clash between sticking with the predetermined game plan versus adapting to the situation on the ground. Nature, of course, is famous for adapting; bureaucrats not so much."