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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Venture Capital Meets Conservation in New Coalition

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Thursday, December 18, 2014   

SAN FRANCISCO — There's a link between successful start-ups and the great outdoors - and members of a new national coalition say it's a profitable one that should be encouraged.

Some of the investment and venture capital firms in the "Conservation for Economic Growth Coalition" are California-based. The list includes DBL Investors, where founder and managing partner Nancy Pfund says today's business owners know that to attract and keep workers - and for virtual companies, with workers who can live wherever they want - research has shown quality of life and access to public land are key components.

"People that work for these companies pay a lot of attention to the recreational availability around them," says Pfund. "And so, it's not just a 'want to have' or a 'nice to have' - it's quite important to the ecosystem that is our entrepreneurial economy."

Tomorrow (Friday), U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is in Napa for a visit that could help underscore that point. She and Forest Service leadership meet with Congressmen Mike Thompson (CA-05) and John Garamendi (CA-03)to drum up support for protecting 350,000 acres of the Berryessa Snow Mountain region.

Pfund says the coalition isn't suggesting edging out more traditional, extractive industries - but sees those resources as finite, and their markets as fickle.

Particularly in the West, she says, many areas have found they can capitalize on their natural beauty or even their remoteness, as different types of assets that allow them to diversify.

"We are able to balance our need for minerals, for timber rights, with the growing need we have for recreational, preserved areas," she says. "And with a prudent management approach, you don't need to give up any kind of economic growth."

The Conservation for Economic Growth Coalition includes a dozen high-profile investors and CEOs who say they will work together to encourage Congress and the president to step up public land protection, through national park, national monument and wilderness designations - and to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund next year.



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