Precis

Jack and Laura Dangermond spent their honeymoon in a pup tent on a remote and spectacular stretch of southern Californian coast. They were students, idealistic and broke.

We both fell in love with that place – Jack Dangermond

Over the next 50 years the Dangermonds grew into billionaires, and all through those years they witnessed the unabating march of suburbia up and down the coast. Their old honeymoon haunt became part of a vast property owned by a hedge fund that develops coastal real estate.

We just thought, ‘Well, we just have to do this’ – Laura Dangermond

So Jack and Laura spied a chance and swooped, shelling out $225 million to save for all time a 10,000 hectare tract of pristine coast and its hinterland of oak forests, hills, canyons and grasslands.

I didn’t believe what I was hearing. This was a big piece of good news – Mike Bell from The Nature Conservancy, the environmental NGO which was handed the land, its biggest gift ever, by the Dangermonds

Jack and Laura Dangermond are private people who rarely talk to media. But they open up to Foreign Correspondent about how they pulled off this big green deal, and why. They hope their gift will inspire similar acts, big and small, and there is urgency to their message.

Time is running out. It’s not dark yet but it’s late in the day – and people are going to have to move to do this kind of thing in small ways and large ways all over the planet, really quickly – Jack Dangermond

Now they’re challenging Australia’s richest people to take a lead as well.

I want everybody in Australia getting this idea. I want those who really have large means to look at the amazing places in Australia before it’s too late. And everybody else in Australia to plant one more tree, protect one more thing, to play at all levels - Jack Dangermond

The Dangermonds’ conservation coup has come against the run of play, with the Trump administration seeking to roll back environmental safeguards and open up new territory for commercial development.

As North America correspondent Zoe Daniel discovers, Jack and Laura are no left-wing ideologues. Their environmental passion is founded on the hard data that drives their business. Founded nearly 50 years ago, their company Esri leads the world in digital mapping, its software used by 350,000 organisations to predict flash floods, ease traffic snarls, help the homeless or plot the next Starbucks.

I like maps. They’re a kind of language, the language of geography, the language of human activities, the language of understanding – Jack Dangermond

GVs. Landscape/Coastline

ZOE DANIEL: [aerial shot of coastline] Imagine this, swallowed by suburbia.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Just a couple of kids falling in love with something can actually go big”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “We just thought, well we have to do this”.

00:00

Music

00:11

ZOE DANIEL: Tonight, the story of a wild place saved,

00:15

Dangermonds walk in bushland with Mike Bell

and the billionaire couple who made it happen with the gift of a lifetime.

00:18

Mike Bell

MIKE BELL: “I didn’t believe what I was hearing, it was unbelievable.

00:23

Mike with Jack in bush

This was a piece of good news, a big piece of good news”.

00:26

Dangermonds walk in bushland with Zoe

Protecting our world isn't a spectator sport. Everyone needs to get involved, everyone needs to be a leader.

00:31

Title:
Foreign Correspondent

Music

00:35

LA skyline. Super:
Los Angeles, California

00:40

LA Beach GVs

00:48

Zoe on bike along beach. Super:
reporter
Zoe Daniel

01:02

Title:
A BIG PIECE OF GOOD NEWS

01:05

LA Beach GVs

ZOE DANIEL: California, close to 40 million people are crammed in here – 10 million of them in Los Angeles County alone.

01:13

Music

01:21

Landscape/Laura walks

ZOE DANIEL:  Just up the road though is a very different slice of California, a unique place that’s just been saved from development by a couple of very private billionaires who are so reclusive that barely anyone’s ever heard of them outside their industry.

01:32

Coastal landscape

MIKE BELL: “It’s truly a miracle that this landscape,

02:00

Mike Bell interview

this property exists in its natural form still.  Its special location and geography and this west facing coastline and south facing coastline and Point Conception just made for these conditions where there’s an incredible amount of biodiversity here, an extraordinary set of natural communities.  So, it’s no surprise that people wanted to protect this”.

02:05

Zoe and Mike Bell in jeep

ZOE DANIEL: Mike Bell works for the Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation that raises money to buy up tracts of land all over the world. Their policy of partnering with big business is sometimes controversial.

02:27

View of ocean

MIKE BELL: “So we’ve taken criticism when working with certain companies, but if a company approaches us

02:48

Mike Bell interview

and seems sincere, and acts sincerely with us to really develop a solution, we’ll keep working with them”.

02:55

Drone shots over coastal landscape

Music

03:04

ZOE DANIEL: This place is not just a beauty spot and a haven for plants and animals.  There are hundreds of sites of historic significance here.

03:17

Point Conception

Spanish explorers called this headland, Point Conception.  For the Native American Chumash though, it was a place for the end of life, its waters the portal to enter the next world.

MIKE BELL: “This is eight to nine miles of just, you know, incredibly pristine coastline, where

03:28

Mike Bell interview

the animals that utilise the coast, that includes bears and sea lions and seals, they have this sort of intact, quiet place that is unlike any other part of the Southern California coastline”.

03:49

Houses along coastline

Music

04:10

Zoe driving along coast/Beach scenes

04:24

ZOE DANIEL: “Jack and Laura Dangermond were barely more than kids when they drove along this same road, Pacific Highway 1, on their honeymoon and fell in love with this coastline –

04:50

Zoe in car to camera

just like everybody else.  Back then, they had nothing, just each other and an idea, but fifty years later, they’re multi billionaires, and having made their fortune, Jack and Laura are using their wealth to set an example for the common good. We’re on our way to meet them”.

05:00

Drone shot, Zoe driving

Music

05:20

Cojo ranch gate

05:39

Dangermonds greet Mike Bell

05:46

ZOE DANIEL: This is the first time the Dangermonds have visited the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve since the deal went through.

06:01

MIKE BELL: “I think we’re going to park here and do a little tour and then get back to the Cojo headquarters and have lunch.  And so, one question is, do we want to hop in a truck or do we want to hop in an open UTV?”

06:08

Dangermonds and Mike Bell in truck on reserve

Music

06:23

ZOE DANIEL: They spent their honeymoon camping just down the road, 52 years ago, a couple of young, idealistic and broke students”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Needless to say we have great memories

06:31

Jack and Laura interview

of the beach and it was a place where I think, obviously we both fell in love with the place”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Oh yeah it’s just spectacular”.

06:46

Dangermonds walk with Mike

ZOE DANIEL: Now all these years later, their gift of $165 million US dollars is the biggest ever received by the Nature Conservancy.  Mike had a key role in clinching the deal.

06:55

JACK DANGERMOND: “Finding Michael was a gift”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Finding Michael”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Because he’s not a normal person. He’s really extraordinary,

07:13

Jack and Laura interview

in both his passion, but also his ability to organise and make things happen”.

07:20

Mike interview

MIKE BELL: “I don’t have any one word to tell you what Jack Dangermond is like.  He’s energetic, brilliant, tireless”.

07:23

Dangermonds walk with Mike

ZOE DANIEL: Jack and Laura are visiting in mid-summer, as fires rage across California. 

07:31

Fire in hills

The State’s largest ever fire is burning and Yosemite National Park is also threatened.  It brings home the fragility and urgency of what they’re trying to do.

07:37

Jack and Laura on reserve with Mike

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Yeah, and this is the driest time, August”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Sure is. But even in its dryness, you get this sort of a grey, green, yellow.  It’s an amazing colour combination”.

ZOE DANIEL: Even dry as it is, the property, at around 10,000 hectares, remains stunningly beautiful and all but untouched.

07:58

JACK DANGERMOND: “There is no sound here.  I’m just noticing how amazing it is…”

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Yes, no car noise”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “…to be without sound”.

08:20

Cattle grazing

08:27

Zoe to camera

ZOE DANIEL: [on the reserve] “For more than a 100 years the land behind me was a working ranch, eyed by developers and eventually acquired by a Boston hedge fund with plans to subdivide it for the rich and famous.  But when the hedge fund ran into trouble with California’s rigid environmental laws, the Dangermonds and the Nature Conservancy swooped – stunning the international conservation community and that was always the plan – to grab attention”.

08:33

Laura interview. Super:
Laura Dangermond 

LAURA DANGERMOND: “We chose in this case not to be anonymous because we hoped that we would get the energy from it and I think that we are getting it, so it’s worth…”

ZOE DANIEL: “It’s not a natural thing for you, is it?”

LAURA DANGERMOND: “No, no”.

ZOE DANIEL: “Because you’d rather be quiet”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Quiet and not have anyone notice. So it was hard to make that decision and then you know when we decided to do it, it was scary and still it’s a little scary having people know.  But on the other hand, I think it’s worth it. I do.  And we only have a limited amount of time left to do these things, so I think we have to let people know”.

09:00

Jack interview. Super:
Jack Dangermond

JACK DANGERMOND: “Time is running out.  It’s late in the day, it’s not dark yet, but it’s late in the day, and people are going to have to move to do this kind of thing in small ways and large ways all over the planet, really quickly”.

09:41

Redlands, California. GVs

Music

09:56

ZOE DANIEL: The Dangermonds run their tech business from this little Californian town of Redlands, where they grew up. They set up their digital mapping company Esri, in 1969, with savings of just two thousand dollars. It’s since been valued by Forbes at more than five and a half billion.

10:02

Jack at Laura at Esri HQ

JACK DANGERMOND: “We simply made a start-up and it’s just very gradually grown up to become…

10:21

Jack and Laura interview

I guess you would call it the world leader in geographic information systems today”.

10:30

Inside Esri.

ZOE DANIEL:  Geographic information systems, or GIS, creates complex layered maps that are used by governments and business to help visually interpret a problem or issue.

10:35

Jack and Laura

JACK DANGERMOND: “I like maps. They’re kind of a language.  They are the language of geography and the language of human activities, the language of understanding. So when you look at some text, you sort of understand through text an idea that somebody’s trying to communicate. When you look at a picture, it’s worth a thousand words they say, but a map is we think worth a million words because you see context as well as the content”.

10:49

Archival. '60s music festival

Music

11:18

ZOE DANIEL: The Dangermonds came of age in the sixties, as the Californian counterculture was blossoming. 

11:21

Stills. Jack and Laura

But they chose their own unique road.

11:33

Jack interview

JACK DANGERMOND: “This thought occurred to us that our role is not to go to the right or go to the left, or protest or act out, what is attractive to us is rational thinking and that appeals to me.  It appeals to Laura. I think it’s really more her than me, you know, not being out there trying to be interesting, but being interested.  So anybody can try to look interesting, how they dress up or whatever it is, but to be genuinely interested in helping other people be successful and do their work, this has, I think, been one of the big ingredients of our success”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Yes, I think helping other people be successful, because we have the tool to do that”.

11:42

Zoe driving/Drone shots along coast

Music

12:27

ZOE DANIEL: Miraculously, this public beach right next to the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve has been spared from development, a relic of the California of old.

12:45

Bikers at beach car park

12:56

Zoe to camera at beach

“It’s easy to see why people love this stretch of coastline, thousands of families escape the rat race every summer, coming to this camp ground just next to the ranch for this beach and these world-famous burgers”.

13:06

Burger store

13:19

Beach shots

Apart from this one public beach, much of the coast around here is privately owned by the wealthy, and that’s controversial. The Preserves beaches will also be off limits to the public, but at least the land will stay undeveloped.

13:28

Man on beach #1

MAN ON BEACH #1: “I like it because we’ve got enough housing.  We don’t need to put up any more developments.  I mean, anywhere they’ve got a chance to put up a development, they shove something in there so I like it.  I mean I would like it just to stay how it is.  It’s beautiful”.

13:43

Man on beach #2

MAN ON BEACH #2: “It definitely has a different feeling when you’re here, because there’s nothing on the cliff face. You know, there’s a shack and a ranger station and that’s kind of it”.

13:55

Oil rigs in ocean/Tar on beach

ZOE DANIEL: Oil rigs are a constant reminder of industry along the coast. Tar spills onto the beach from natural undersea seeps, but in 2015 a corroded pipeline spilt hundreds of thousands of litres of oil into the region’s protected marine areas.  President Donald Trump wants to open up more of this coast to offshore drilling – despite strong local opposition.

14:09

Mike Bell interview

“Was the timing of this purchase in any way related to the current state of American politics, and particularly the actions of Donald Trump on various environmental issues?”

MIKE BELL: “No.  Not at all”.

14:38

ZOE DANIEL: “What about the community reaction and welcoming of what happened?”

MIKE BELL: “That’s entirely related.  The news hit fast and suddenly

14:54

Super:
Michael Bell
The Nature Conservancy

and it was a big news for conservation and conservation hadn’t been getting a lot of good news lately. There has been a lot of controversies about our national monuments, and about a lot of environmental protection regulation that we had in place.  And this was a piece of good news, and it was a big piece of good news”.

15:07

Cattle grazing

Music

15:31

JACK DANGERMOND: “Leaving a legacy is often a story.  It’s about creating a story of conservation.  As human development encroaches on these remaining areas of high biodiversity, like this ranch, I think we need to step up the story-telling so that people say I can make a difference,

15:35

Jack

and young, many young people that I talk to want to do it”.

15:56

[walking along reserve] “I mean I get so excited just looking at it”.

16:00

Jack and Laura walk with Zoe

ZOE DANIEL: “Well, this is your first time back”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “It is”.

ZOE DANIEL: “What’s that like?”

JACK DANGERMOND: “Well, you know, we live a more or less urban life, and so getting in this kind of space is ahh… it lifts you up”.

ZOE DANIEL: “But you know when you look at…

16:05

like you look at that and you think, well, you know, it could have been cut down or houses could have been built”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “And we have seen it Zoe, we’ve seen them cut down, near us, near our town. 

16:20

A forest exactly like this as a matter of fact.  I think the idea of not developing every square foot of land in California is part of where we’re coming from here, is that no, this should not be developed, ever”.

ZOE DANIEL: “Does the enormity of what you’ve done strike you at all?”

16:33

Jack interview

JACK DANGERMOND: “Well, considering the kind of problems we’re facing globally, it doesn’t seem so big.  I mean, we’re challenged with climate change and loss of biodiversity.  This is kind of a little, small footprint and it has to be replicated lots and lots more and we also have to address all the big challenges that our world is facing right now”.

16:56

LA homeless

ZOE DANIEL: It’s not just about the environment.  The Dangermonds' mapping systems are helping solve other challenges like LA’s massive homeless problem.  More than 57,000 people, many of them young, are on the streets every night. With its partners, Esri has mapped 25 cities, collecting complex, real time data so that outreach and beds can be matched to people who need them.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “Having all that information available

17:19

Laura and Jack with Zoe

to policy makers leaves them no excuse for not making good policy”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “And good decisions”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “And good decisions”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Yes, it adds to the transparency of the way people behave. So if I really, in a social setting like in a city or in a nation, if we have all the science there and people are still making stupid decisions, then you can call politicians or decisions makers on the carpet, so to speak, because we’ve got documented evidence that this is the way, not that”.

LAURA DANGERMOND: “There’s no excuse”.

18:00

Dangermond reserve

Music

18:34

ZOE DANIEL: When the Nature Conservancy began in 1951 it had a simple idea, to buy up land and protect it from development.  Over the years, it’s embraced more and more partnerships with big business looking at solutions to all kinds of issues.

18:43

MIKE BELL: “The environmental problems we have on this earth are profound.  They’re created

19:02

Mike interview

by our own economic activity to provide for ourselves and our families and companies and corporations play a big role in that.  And these are massive, you know, multinational corporations doing this.  They’re at a very large scale. We need to work at that large scale. We can’t simply expect to find large scale answers by working at small scale, so we will work with, you know, the largest companies in the private sector and the biggest governments on earth to try to do that”.

19:12

Ranch buildings and animals

ZOE DANIEL: The cattle ranch that’s been on this land for more than 100 years will stay for now.  Grazing reduces fire risk and weeds and buys the Nature Conservancy time to plan the next steps. And while limited grazing will continue, eventually it’s hoped the land will be returned to close to its original state and become a hub for research.

JACK DANGERMOND: “Our philosophy is we need to really drive forward with information

19:44

Jack interview

and science that can help people understand and then act differently.  So this language of maps, it all ties back to that.  Maps are a way of telling stories. So we have great authors, they tell stories, they did it hundreds of years ago and we even still read their books because their stories are so charming and interesting. 

20:14

The kind of stories that have to be told today are getting society aware that some phenomena are changing in such a way that it’s not going to be sustainable on the planet to live here anymore, and then we’ve got to be able to take action – and it’s not just one person doing the action, it’s not just the president or premier or somebody like that taking action, it’s really us a as body taking action”.

20:34

Mike interview

MIKE BELL: “I think the lesson that Jack and Laura put out here to people is that protecting our world isn’t a spectator sport.  Everyone needs to get involved, everyone needs to be a leader”.

21:00

Laura and Jack walk with Zoe

Music

21:10

ZOE DANIEL: Jack and Laura are in their seventies.  Their gift is huge, and their hope is that it may lead to something even bigger, a shift in the public consciousness about the way we all live, large or small, rich or poor.

21:14

Landscapes/Coastline shots

JACK DANGERMOND: “What I see is necessary is the reprogramming of the way people think and that’s at the economic level, at the behaviour level, at all levels so that they get aware of that we need to do conservation in every way possible. 

21:33

Music

21:50

JACK DANGERMOND: Plant one more tree,

22:00

Jack

protect one more thing, play at all levels.  This is the big copycat reason why I think we wanted to go public on it”.

22:02

Landscape

Music

22:10

“A lot of people invest in famous paintings, you know a Mondrian or a Van Gogh. 

22:15

Jack and Laura on the reserve with Zoe

This is a real painting, and it’s a fraction of the price.  I mean to be able to buy this whole reserve was the price of one of these paintings”.

ZOE DANIEL: “Well, and more can grow”.

JACK DANGERMOND: “And more can grow and it’ll be here forever.  That’s exactly right”.

22:22

Reporter - Zoe Daniel

Producer - Bronwen Reed, Matt Davis

Researc – Jill Colgan

Camera - Adrian Wilson, Matt Davis

Editor - Nikki Stevens

Assistant Editor – Tom Carr

Executive Producer - Marianne Leitch

Foreign Correspondent
abc.net.au/foreign

ABC © 2018

22:44

Outpoint after credits

23:07