Habitat in the Amazon is particularly important. Not only is it home to an extraordinary array of plants and animals, but the trees act like lungs for the planet by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing oxygen. In recent decades, the forest has shriveled under pressure from logging and farming.
“The loggers go in with a shotgun and chain saw,” said Charles Smith, a local entrepreneur and a board member for Nature and Culture International. “It’s wickedly devastating.”
Deep concern about deforestation dawned on Gayler after he and his business partner David Winkler sold the upscale Del Mar Plaza in 1989 for $36.1 million. “I essentially went on a walkabout after I finished the plaza … to look at my life and my skills and what was happening in our era in terms of the defining issue,” he said. “I determined the issue of our time is biodiversity loss and climate change.”
As he talked with conservationists in South America, his vision focused on protecting large swathes of land. Of particular interest are spots where parcels run from coastal lowlands to the mountains so animals can migrate up slope as the climate warms. “We are creating these arks of life for the future,” Gayler said.
While Gayler pursued environmental goals, he kept his hand in business. The 33-year-old Del Mar Partnership has built or operated more than one million square feet of retail, medical, bioscience, offices and industrial properties. The partnership also played a pivotal role in bringing Idec Pharmaceuticals -- later acquired by Biogen -- to San Diego in the early 1990s.
Abroad, Nature and Culture International built the San Francisco Scientific Station on the northern edge of Podocarpus National Park in Ecuador, where the German Research Foundation and its partners run what’s described as the largest tropical mountain ecology research program in the world.
The science involves locals as part of the education component of Gayler’s vision. “We have now educated dozens of Ph.D.s and hundreds of master's students,” he said. “They are the human infrastructure of conservation.”
Nature and Culture International also purchases environmentally sensitive parcels and works with governments to restrict development across larger tracts of forest. At the same time, it helps indigenous people develop sustainable industries such as the sale of plant-based oils for cosmetics and making baskets from local palms.
Work in Latin America is made easier by the cost of land — which can be put in conservation status for as little as $1 per acre — but it is complicated by ownership patterns that can take years to navigate even when Gayler’s crews have won the trust of nationals.
Gayler attributes much of his success to his strategy of working from the highest political levels down to native villagers. “What makes it different is that we never say, ‘This is what you should do.’ Our approach is to say, ‘How can we help you?’” said Gayler.
He has funded a substantial amount of conservation himself, but avoids discussion of the details. In 2010, his work earned the zoo’s Conservation Medal, an honor shared with luminaries such as Jane Goodall and David Attenborough.
Perhaps more importantly, his enthusiasm has proved infectious to people such as Smith, who recently got a bid for redoing the patio at his home for about $100,000.
“I can’t do it,” Smith said this week. “Do you know much I could get done in South America with $100,000?”