Projects

Defense of Place
The goal of Defense of Place is to create a principle in the minds of Americans that our protected lands will be protected forever. The need comes from an uncomfortable trend to violate preserved landscapes. Universities, churches, Boy Scout groups, and even environmental organizations are increasingly tempted to sell places they accepted with the promise that they would be saved forever. Years after the donors are long dead, land values go up, and the temptation to cash in takes over. We believe protecting these lands and honoring the promises to do that are more valuable than money.

Health of People and the Environment
Environmental problems don’t just threaten out aesthetic sensibilities—they threaten our bodies, and those of our loved ones. RRI’s Health of People and the Environment project seeks to make clear the connection between environmental health and human health, and to introduce comprehensive policy to manage the environment for the long-term health and well-being of all people.

Green Plans
Since incorporation in 1985, RRI has imparted a new vision for management of our natural and physical environment, Green Plans. These comprehensive, integrated, cooperative, and long-term strategies that represent a global benchmark for innovative environmental management.

Water Heritage Trust
The Water Heritage Trust (WHT) is intended to do for water what land trusts have done for land—preserve it to ensure the protection of endangered fish and wildlife, and preserve the future qualify of life for all people.

Public Trust Alliance
The Public Trust Alliance was launched in March, 2002 by RRI with a mission to raise the profile of the Public Trust Doctrine as an important tool in making economic development more sustainable. Michael Warburton is director of the project. The Public Trust is a little-known legal doctrine built on the notion that some public assets like water, managed by government, are so valuable to health and equity of civic society that they cannot be sold or given away like other property. Instead, they are to be managed in trust for the benefit of the people. We use this historic legal framework to defend public assets in modern development debates.

Californians for Western Wilderness
Californians for Western Wilderness (CalUWild) is an unincorporated citizens group founded for the purpose of securing protection for the remaining wilderness areas in the western United States. The organization's major focus is to create a constituency in California for wilderness in the West, and to encourage and facilitate direct citizen democracy through participation in administrative and legislative actions affecting wild lands in the West.