The Nature Conservancy is a charitable environmental organization, headquartered in Arlington, United States. Founded in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has over one million members, has protected more than 119,000,000 acres of land and thousands of miles of rivers worldwide; the largest environmental nonprofit by assets and revenue in the Americas, The Nature Conservancy ranks as one of the most trusted national organizations in Harris Interactive polls every year since 2005. Forbes magazine rated The Nature Conservancy's fundraising efficiency at 88 percent in its 2005 survey of the largest U. S. charities. The Conservancy received a three-star rating from Charity Navigator in 2016; the Nature Conservancy developed out of a scholarly organization known as the Ecological Society of America. The ESA was founded in 1915 and two years formed a Committee on Preservation of Natural Areas for Ecological Study, headed by Victor Shelford. Whereas the Society focused on promoting research, in the course of the 1930s Shelford and his colleagues sought to advocate for conservation.
The divide in viewpoints regarding scholarship or advocacy led the Society to dissolve the committee, and, in 1946, Shelford and his colleagues formed the Ecologists' Union. The latter group took the name "The Nature Conservancy", in emulation of the British agency of that name, which pursued a mission of conserving open space and wildlife preserves; the Nature Conservancy was incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization on October 22, 1951. The Nature Conservancy's expanding international conservation efforts include work in North America, Central America, South America, the Pacific Rim, the Caribbean, Asia; the Nature Conservancy and its conservation partner, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, are working to halt deforestation on private lands in and around the 1.8 million acre Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, along the Guatemala–Mexico border. In November 2004, 370,000 acres of threatened tropical forest in Calakmul were permanently protected under a historic land deal between the Mexican federal and state government, Pronatura Peninsula Yucatán, four local communities and the Conservancy.
The Nature Conservancy's programs in Idaho and Wyoming are working together to build partnerships and enhance the profile of the conservation needs in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem by supporting voluntary, private land conservation of important wildlife habitat. In 2007, the Nature Conservancy made a 161,000-acre purchase of New York forestland from Finch Paper Holdings LLC for $110 million, its largest purchase in that state. In June 2008, The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land announced they reached an agreement to purchase 320,000 acres of western Montana forestland from Plum Creek Timber Company for $510 million; the purchase, known as the Montana Legacy Project, is part of an effort to keep these forests in productive timber management and protect the area's clean water and abundant fish and wildlife habitat, while promoting continued public access to these lands for fishing, hiking and other recreational pursuits. As a follow-on, in 2015 The Nature Conservancy made a $134 million transaction to purchase 165,073 acres – 257 square miles – of forests and wildlife habitat in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington and in the Blackfoot River Valley in Montana.
The Conservancy acquired this land from Plum Creek, including 47,921 acres in the Yakima River Headwaters in Washington and 117,152 acres in the Lower Blackfoot River Watershed in Montana. In December 2015, The Nature Conservancy announced the finalization of the first debt swap in Seychelles aimed at ocean conservation; the new protected area increases the country's marine protected waters from less than 1 percent to more than 30 percent including support for the creation of the second largest Marine Protected Area in the Western Indian Ocean. The debt swap deal was made possible through a partnership with the Seychelles Ministry of Finance, support of debt-holding nations including France, grants from private organizations led by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Financing for this effort was organized by The Nature Conservancy's impact investing unit called NatureVest. NatureVest was created in 2014 with founding sponsorship from JPMorgan Chase & Co. with the stated goal of sourcing and putting to work at least $1 billion of impact investment capital for measurable conservation outcomes over three years.
For their work on the Seychelles debt restructuring, The Nature Conservancy and JPMorgan Chase were given the FT/ITC Transformational Business Award for Achievement in Transformational Finance The award is given by the Financial Times and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation for ground-breaking, commercially viable solutions to development challenges. The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billion Trees campaign is an effort to restore 2,500,000 acres of land and plant one billion trees by 2025 in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil; each donated dollar results in one planted tree in the Atlantic Forest. The Plant a Billion Trees campaign has been identified as a tool to help slow climate change, as the Atlantic Forest – one of the biggest tropical forests in the world – helps regulate the atmosphere and stabilize global climate; the reforestation of the Atlantic Forest has the capability to remove 10 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. The Nature Conservancy states.
The Atlantic Forest's restoration could help to slow the process of climate change, affecting the Earth. The Nature Conservancy's Plant a Billi
The 1910 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 8 May and on Sunday, 22 May 1910, to elect the 14th Restoration Cortes of the Kingdom of Spain. All 404 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 180 of 360 seats in the Senate; the Spanish Constitution of 1876 enshrined Spain as a constitutional monarchy, awarding the King power to name senators and to revoke laws, as well as the title of commander-in-chief of the army. The King would play a key role in the system of the turno pacífico by appointing and toppling governments and allowing the opposition to take power. Under this system, the Conservative and Liberal parties alternated in power by means of election rigging, which they achieved through the encasillado, using the links between the Ministry of Governance, the provincial civil governors, the local bosses to ensure victory and exclude minor parties from the power sharing; the Spanish Cortes were envisaged as "co-legislative bodies", based on a nearly perfect bicameralism.
Both the Congress of Deputies and the Senate had legislative and budgetary functions, sharing equal powers except for laws on contributions or public credit, where the Congress had preeminence. Voting for the Cortes was on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, which comprised all national males over twenty-five, having at least a two-year residency in a municipality and in full enjoyment of their civil rights. Voting was compulsory except for those older than 70, the clergy, first instance judges and public notaries. For the Congress of Deputies, 98 seats were elected using a partial block voting in 28 multi-member constituencies, with the remaining 306 being elected under a one-round first-past-the-post system in single-member districts. Candidates winning a plurality in each constituency were elected. In constituencies electing ten seats or more, electors could vote for no more than four candidates less than the number of seats to be allocated. Additionally, in single-member districts where candidates ran unopposed, as well as in multi-member districts where the number of candidates was equal or less than the number of seats to be filled, candidates were to be automatically proclaimed without an election.
The Congress was entitled to one member per each 50,000 inhabitants, with each multi-member constituency being allocated a fixed number of seats: 8 for Madrid, 7 for Barcelona, 5 for Palma and Seville, 4 for Cartagena and 3 for Alicante, Almería, Burgos, Cádiz, Córdoba, Huelva, Jaén, Jerez de la Frontera, Las Palmas, La Coruña, Lugo, Málaga, Oviedo, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Tarragona, Valencia and Zaragoza. The law provided for by-elections to fill seats vacated throughout the legislature. For the Senate, 180 seats were indirectly elected, with electors voting for delegates instead of senators. Elected delegates—equivalent in number to one-sixth of the councillors in each municipal corporation—would vote for senators using a write-in, two-round majority voting system; the provinces of Barcelona and Valencia were allocated four seats each, whereas each of the remaining provinces was allocated three seats, for a total of 150. The remaining 30 were allocated to a number of institutions, electing one seat each—the Archdioceses of Burgos, Santiago de Compostela, Tarragona, Valencia and Zaragoza.
An additional 180 seats comprised senators in their own right—the Monarch's offspring and the heir apparent once coming of age. The term of each House of the Cortes—the Congress and one-half of the elective part of the Senate—expired five years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier; the Monarch had the prerogative to dissolve both Houses at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election. Carreras de Odriozola, Albert. Estadísticas históricas de España, siglos XIX-XX. Volume 1. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA. pp. 1072–1097. ISBN 84-96515-00-1. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Historical archive of deputies from www.congreso.es, the official Congress of Deputies web portal Elections in the Sexenio Revolucionario and the Restoration at www.historiaelectoral.com
Shirley & Company was an American disco group, consisting of Shirley Goodman, Jason Alvarez, Walter Morris, Bernadette Randle, Seldon Powell, Jonathan Williams, Kenny Jeremiah, Clarence Oliver. They topped the U. S. Dance chart in 1975 with "Shame, Shame", did well in Europe: the song reached #6 in the UK Singles Chart and #1 in Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands; the follow-up, "Cry Cry Cry", made it to #91 on the Hot 100 that year. "Shame, Shame" was written and produced by Sylvia Robinson, a co-owner of the All Platinum record label. It was intended for All Platinum artist Donnie Elbert, it was Robinson who paired veteran blues vocalist Shirley Goodman with All Platinum artist Jesus Alvarez. The track, with its prominent use of the Bo Diddley beat, was one of the first international disco hits and reached number 12 on the Billboard charts, it hit number one on the soul singles chart for one week. "Shame, Shame" went number one on the disco/dance chart for four weeks. The full-length LP Shame, Shame was recorded subsequently and came out in 1975.
The lead singer Shirley Goodman, was one half of the duo Shirley and Lee who had a mega hit 18 years earlier, in 1956, writing and recording the song "Let The Good Times Roll" for Aladdin Records. Jesus Alvarez changed his name to Jason Alvarez and became a pastor for the Love of Jesus Family Church, he recorded several gospel albums. 1974 "Shame, Shame" 1975 More Shame 1975 I Like to Dance 1975 Cry, Cry 1975 Disco Shirley 1975 Mr. Frenchman 1975 Shame, Shame 1981 Jason Alvarez - Just Give Me Jesus List of number-one dance hits List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart List of 1970s one-hit wonders in the United States List of disco artists One-hit wonders in the UK List of performers on Top of the Pops