President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick heads the world’s largest conservation organization, which has more than 50 years experience in preserving the Earth’s lands and waters both locally and around the globe. (Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC)

Every generation has its defining moments, often cataclysmic events that prompt us to stop, doubt, ponder and move forward. For Americans of my generation, President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963 was such a moment. It was a moment where all the promise and hope of our time stopped in its tracks.

Yet, even in the face of such tragedy, our reaction as a nation and as a people was to rise to the challenge. The passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the fulfillment of President Kennedy's dream of putting a man on the moon (in 1969) and, later, the passing of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species acts were hopeful responses to such darkness.

To me, this chapter in our nation’s history proves how remarkably resilient we are as a species. Moreover, it gives me hope that we can muster the collective will to address the greatest global challenges of our generation, including extreme poverty, the spread of disease, and the loss of biodiversity and climate change.

These challenges will require us to marshal our intelligence, our compassion and our agility. Scientists tell us we have precious little time to act. We at The Nature Conservancy recognize this urgency and we believe that protecting the Earth’s biological integrity provides the best hope for the well-being of humans and all life in the generations to come.

A few years ago, we were asked to join a project in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, an unprecedented opportunity to help ensure a healthy future for 21 million acres of North America’s coastal temperate rainforest. At the request of several organizations, we led a two year capital campaign to support historic land use agreements that will formally protect more than 5 million acres within the Great Bear on the coast of British Columbia. The land use agreements will also provide for the creation of strict land management guidelines across more than 19 million acres of the rainforest. The successes to date in the Great Bear Rainforest are a tremendous accomplishment and a great example of persistence in the face of what once seemed insurmountable.

But today, what once seemed insurmountable to my generation — going to the moon, establishing equal rights among Americans, creating laws to protect nature — are the realities. My hope for the future is that we continue to foster this persistence of human spirit in facing the daunting conservation challenges confronting us as citizens of the world. We can and will prevail. Every day in my work with the Conservancy, I meet people who are doing just this: surmounting the insurmountable. And I am ever amazed and humbled by them.