By Anne W. Semmes
There was an impressive array of initiatives for saving the diversity of nature, biodiversity, shared at Pollinator Potluck’s season end at Greenwich Audubon on Tuesday evening. Guest speaker was venture capitalist (VC) Kevin Webb, co-founder of Superorganism the “first venture capital firm dedicated to biodiversity-positive investments.”
Preceding Webb was Myra Klockenbrink, cochair of Greenwich Pollinator Pathway addressing a partnership with Audubon to “restore a forest gap here on the Center’s property.” Forest gaps, she told, “are a very common problem in our forest lands where gaps and disturbance have allowed problem plants to come in and overwhelm the natural system of balance.” She pointed to porcelain-berry as having taken over that gap. “We are clearing these plants with the help of Audubon’s month-long high school senior internship program. We’re preparing the soil and installing 1,500 canopy trees and understory trees and shrubs – with at least 35 different species, in a 3,000 square foot circle.” If successful, she said, “we hope it can be replicated and potentially scaled up to bigger parcels…We will also be acoustically tracking bird life. So, the more data we can get about how these forests perform, the better for maximizing their use.”
Kevin Webb was introduced by Center Director Rochelle Thomas. Having met up with Webb years ago in a class at Columbia University she had noticed, “Kevin possessed an ability to think outside the box almost immediately.” And that “out of the box” thinking plus being a “big nature nerd” she believed had led him as a VC to co-founding Superorganism.
Introducing Superorganism venture capital
“The truth is” he began, “our economy runs on nature. So, if you were to look at global GDP, over half of it depends on nature in some direct way, whether you’re talking about food or whether you’re talking about resilience against storm surges. About a third of people on the planet depend on nature directly for sustenance. And largely because of the way we run our global economy, at least a quarter of species on this planet are presently potentially at risk of extinction in the coming century.”
“The beautiful thing about investing in businesses related to climate,” he told, “is you have kind of a metric that can equate a business that is emitting less or drawing down carbon dioxide with CO2e. With nature, all the things that make nature wonderful and beautiful and interesting also make it hard because you’re talking about different ecosystems, different value judgments on do we care about species that are really rare, the ones that are delivering functional benefit for people.”
Webb then dived into his business. “So, we are a superorganism, as Rochelle said. We are the first VC firm to be entirely purpose-built around biodiversity. We are similar to a climate tech fund, but instead of thinking about emitting less carbon dioxide and trying to draw it down, we’re doing the same thing for nature loss. So, avoid nature harms in the first place, undo damage where we can find, where we can do so profitably.
“We’re looking for early-stage businesses,” he continued. “We’re going to invest in about 35 by the time we’re done. We’re at about 21 right now, and we love a big diversity of things that we get to see. So, how do we look for businesses that are able to drive outsized ecological impacts if they succeed? We’re specifically looking for companies able to make a big dent on these extinction drivers.”
“We also invest in AI. Whether we’re looking at AI or satellites or biotechnology, can this startup let people who are doing the important work in the field do something that they couldn’t do before or do more with fewer resources?… We’re investors in a company called Fungal that comes out of academic research… that no matter what ecosystem you are looking at, when trees are grown in healthy biodiverse soil, they wind up growing 30 to 60 percent on average… They inoculate tree seedlings, and as of last year, one in 40 of every loblolly pine planted in the US was a Fungal inoculated plant…We’re also investors in a company called Ulysses that is making underwater robotics. Their very first thing was seagrass planting… It’s very important and very cool and manatees love it and also sharks and also sea turtles. But it’s also a great way to sequester carbon.”
And lastly, “Spoor is a business out of Norway. They are building AI on top of commodity cameras to be able to detect bird species and movements around offshore wind… If you have any positive assumptions about the way that offshore wind is growing, every single one of those turbines pays an ornithologist up to $20,000 a year to go out once or twice to say how many species are being impacted and then report back.” A mission critical he said “for these companies from a compliance perspective. Spore replaces that with a camera that is monitored 24/7 and able to command the same price – and also increasingly able to validate that a site for a new turbine is as minimally harmful as possible.”
Webb then had a “shoutout” for Audubon Director Thomas that he would be working with Webb to bring Spoor’s expertise to the Center as “one of their first US sites” to operate during the Center’s Hawk Watch.
Connecticut’s Wildlife Action Plan
Lastly was Robert LaFrance, Policy Director for Audubon Connecticut and New York regional office, to address biodiversity on the state level. “Kevin is actually bringing solutions to the table,” he noted. “We have a biodiversity crisis, and we have a climate crisis… I try and work with the Department of Energy Environmental Protection to move forward policies that can help us take care of our problems here in Connecticut.”
He spoke of the Wildlife Action Plan, “a 10-year program of identifying what the needs of nature are in the state… It’s CT House Bill 5330, an act concerning certain wildlife plans. It calls for hiring a wildlife veterinarian… we’re dealing with bird deaths from rodenticides… It’s going to facilitate the implication of the new wildlife action plan, basically start to improve conservation measures for biodiversity.”
LaFrance ended with an initiative dating to the Biden Administration. “Biden tried to come up with something called the National Nature Assessment… But a stall came with administration change. But “The people who were working on this said, ‘This work is too important.’ And they were able to raise the funds. So, there is a whole book that they’re putting together – “The Nature Record” – explaining all the different elements of nature at naturesrecords.org. I encourage you to take a look at it and see what you can learn from it.”
Post note: Participants would also experience tasting an extraordinary edible called “Torie’s Cherry Chocolate-Chunk Cookie” being passed around, the work of Walter Shanley, the husband of Ingrid Milne, CFO of Audubon Connecticut.
