EF: You were in the news in November for buying 40,000 acres of land for $40 million. Newspapers reported that was the Panhandle area's largest private conservation project. What gave you the idea for that project?
MC: Well, I'd say, to my knowledge, it's the largest private conservation tract east of the Mississippi River. The only one I'm aware of larger is Ted Turner's out West. Big is better, generally, for biodiversity, and that is my purpose: to conserve biodiversity. The reason that's important is because, to me, we have a debt to pass down to the succeeding generations, that we must pass [on] these natural processes, such as the ability to store carbon and regenerate new oxygen to have pure potable water. So if you don't have functioning ecosystems in place, that can't happen. The way you get functioning ecosystems is you've got to do conservation on a landscape-type level. In other words, it's so large that it can function independently. Forty thousand acres is not that large. But the key is that it joins up about a million acres. That's why I chose that particular area.

EF: What plans do you have, or what do you expect out of, the Nokuse Plantation?
MC: Well, I would hope that, long term, various federal and state agencies will help me restore it. A lot of it's been in agriculture, and a lot of it's in silviculture (the commercial growing of trees). While we have our basic biodiversity intact, it's just way below its normal volume because 80% of the land has been converted into agriculture or silviculture. So I will have to restore those lands.

EF: Do you think that private conservation -- people taking conservation projects upon themselves -- is something that more and more people will be involved in?
MC: Well, I sure hope so. And I believe so; I just hope that the change comes before it's degraded any further. But certainly, we're already seeing that. I know out West, you have Ted Turner -- which he's done a lot in the East, too, and in Florida -- he's done hundreds of thousands of acres, backing conservation in Montana, out in that area. The lady who owns Burt's Bees wax, she's quite a lady, she's spending about 95% of all her wealth on private conservation. There's Sam Shine . . . he's a noted wildlife and conservation philanthropist, and he's doing a number of private conservation deals. He was my joint venture partner at Mallory Swamp. He's a tremendous conservationist. He's probably more active in Florida from a financial aspect in particular than any other person in Florida, I would say. And he's not even from Florida; he's originally from Indiana, but he moved here. So I think we'll see more and more of it. I hope this will gain the magnitude that, back in the 20s and 30s, education got from a number of private businesspeople who recycled their wealth back into educational institutions, and I hope that this will happen in the world of conservation.

EF: There's a new idea that preserving even small tracts of land, like about 5 acres, is becoming worthwhile.
MC: I would say I'm ambivalent about that. It's not important biologically. A 5-acre tract, eh, I mean there's exceptions to everything. Certainly, if you have an endangered or threatened species, and that's the key piece of habitat -- yes, that's important. But generally speaking, no, it's not very important biologically. Once you're isolated, you could think of it as a 5-acre island. You can't have, for the most part, the genetics of the various species. The genes will not be passed back and forth, and most everything will perish in that 5 acres long term. Some birds would be an exception. They could fly in and feed, but you couldn't really make them live in there. Now, what I do feel is very important -- in fact, it may be even more important than the big projects -- is the opportunity to expose our youth to the esthetics and the science of conservation. You preserve 5 or 10 acres in Orlando, and you might have 100,000 or 200,000 kids a year see it and give them a chance to fall in love with it. Whereas normally, if you're conserving huge tracts of land, the reason you can do that, there's not many people here. So I think from that perspective, saving anything we can is valuable, particularly if you can educate from it. And you can create little mini ecosystems for a lot of species, so I would say if you throw in the education part, too, along with some biological success . . . the small conservation tracts are very important. I'll give you a quote from Baba Dioum. He summed it up best of all. He's an African philosopher/conservationist. He said in the long term, we'll only save what we love; we can only love what we understand, and we can only understand what we have been taught. It's obvious that most of our kids are growing up in urban areas. So if they don't have a chance to see trees, hawks, owls, snakes, rare plants, there's no way they can fall in love with [them].

EF: Do you think there will be any of that going on at the Nokuse Plantation?
MC: Sure, after I get my arms around it and we get squared away. I've already made tentative plans with several of the regional schools. It's not official yet, but we'll be conducting tours and biological classes. And we did that very successfully at Mallory for several years. We had a number of schools that would take turns teaching their biology classes right there on site.

EF: So what land borders Nokuse?
MC: To the west is Eglin Air Force Base. It's about 500,000 acres, and it's in conservation. And it joins Blackwater River State Forest, which is about 180,000 acres. And Blackwater joins Conecuh National Forest right on the Alabama/Florida line, which is about 100,000 acres. And also some lands that join in there are the recent purchase by The Nature Conservancy, the Yellow River tract, and it's about 15,000 to 20,000 acres. And then we have the Northwest Florida Water Management District; they have about 75,000 acres running up and down the Choctawhatchee River, which is my eastern boundary. And all of this is joined now by this 40,000-acre corridor.

EF: That's a lot of land.
MC: It is. Our long-range plans are to go and connect it to Tate's Hell State Forest and then from Tate's Hell to Apalachicola National Forest, then on down to the Aucilla and St. Mark's over to the Mallory Swamp, up the Suwannee River to Osceola to the Okefenokee Swamp. Now, obviously, the succeeding generations will have to complete this; we're just trying to get it started. It'll dip down into northern-central Florida and then come back up the Suwannee. And it's not as overwhelming as one might think. Obviously, it's an arduous task, but it's just not totally out of the realm of possibility because about 50% of the land that I'm describing to make this whole trip from the Alabama line all the way back to the Okefenokee Swamp -- half of it's already in conservation . . . . It's doable. It'll take a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of interested people. But it's doable.

EF: You've mentioned the Mallory Swamp a couple of times. How would you compare that project with the Nokuse Plantation?
MC: I would say they're probably somewhat equal in importance. The Nokuse might be somewhat more important just because the potential to grow it and the connectivities are greater, but like Mallory Swamp, both of them were state-declared biological hotspots, which means that they have a preponderance of species per acre or whatever measurement you're using. This is the 6th most important, according to state documents, biological hotspot that was still not in public hands in the United States. One of the reasons I chose the Mallory was 1, it was available, and 2, it was reasonably affordable, but it also was a biological hotspot. When you're doing conservation, the more biodiversity you have, the more bang you get for your buck.

EF: How do you find out where these biological hotspots are?
MC: Well, I spend probably 40 hours a week working on conservation, so I'm in the loop and I'm a member of a number of organizations, plus I follow what the state's doing. I stay abreast of what the various scientists are documenting. There's a guy I would like for you to mention because he's a really renowned biologist. His name is Dr. Reed Noss. He's now a professor at the University of Central Florida. He was my consulting biologist on Mallory Swamp and Nokuse. He's written a lot of wonderful books. His most important was Saving Nature's Legacy. He explains this concept that I've used -- I followed his hypothesis: Basically, if you can't find enough land that'll function long term totally on its own, then connect it, you buffer it, you find a corridor and connect it to something bigger and try to buffer the edges.

EF: Are there other conservation projects you're working on right now?
MC: I have more than you've got time. I just recently acquired and have donated, in fact, this month, Cat's Den Cave. It's in Smith County, Miss. And I don't have evidence, but I have been told by scientists that it's the largest cave system for bats in private hands. There is one particular bat there that's the smallest bat in North America. So I was pleased to get that. I don't have a lot of land around it because it wasn't available. I only could buffer it with about 70 or 80 acres. But it's remote, so I think it will last long term, and I gave that to The Nature Conservancy. I'm working on projects on the Peace River and the Withlacoochee River, and I have done work on the Suwannee, ended up getting it in the hands of the Suwannee River water district for public conservation.

EF: What would you like to see happen in Florida as far as conservation goes?
MC: Well, what I would like to see is that we expand all of our existing conservation tracts, and to do that, we need to have 2 things: We need to change our tax base to where we quit forcing people to retire here because there's no income tax so we can get our growth rate under control. But we need to conserve just all that we can because it's going away and being degraded at such a pace that if we're going to save biodiversity as we know it today, I'd say we'll need to conserve at least 50% of the rural lands.

EF: Thank you very much for your conservation effort for the state of Florida.
MC: I'm glad you're interested in working on it yourself. We all have to work on it in whatever capacity life has directed.