The Big Three: How Rhode Island’s Largest Environmental Nonprofits View Their Role
hode Island’s three big environmental nonprofits have their hands full when it comes to the challenges they address, the problems they encounter, and the development projects they are expected to stop.
The Nature Conservancy, Save The Bay, and the Audubon Society of Rhode Island are linked by their shared mission to protect Mother Nature. Their work comes with success and failure, responsibility, and criticism.
The latter typically follows a project unfriendly to the natural world and upsetting to neighbors, and oftentimes the greater community. The fossil fuel power plant proposed for the woods of Burrillville more than a decade ago unleashed a flood of finger-pointing. The Big Three received their share of criticism, accused of joining the statewide fight late. Another nonprofit, the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, led the successful fight against the natural gas (methane) facility.