It's taken Esri's Jack and Laura Dangermond 50 years and $225m to save this wild coastline

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Sorry, this video has expired Video: The billionaires purchased land that Spanish explorers named Point Conception (ABC News)

A reclusive billionaire couple has paid $225 million to save an iconic slice of Californian coastline from development, in the biggest ever donation to the global environmental group The Nature Conservancy.

Key points: The Dangermonds bought the 10,000 hectare tract of land for $225 million

They then donated the site to The Nature Conservancy

The couple started their company, Esri, with $2,000 in savings, but it is now worth $5.5 billion

Jack and Laura Dangermond made their money in tech, and their company Esri now controls almost half of the world's market in geographic information systems — the data-rich maps used in all kinds of research for business and government.

The usually media-shy couple agreed to talk to Foreign Correspondent about their donation because they want to inspire others to make a contribution too — large or small.

"I want everybody in Australia getting this idea," Mr Dangermond said.

"I want those who really have large means to look at the amazing places in Australia before it's too late. And everybody else in Australia to plant one more tree, protect one more thing, to play at all levels."

The Dangermonds first encountered the land on their honeymoon, when they camped out in a small tent.

They were students — broke but determined to leave their mark.

"We both fell in love with that place," Mr Dangermond said.

Over the next 50 years the couple built their fortune, while the land they so loved became threatened by housing developments that were spreading rapidly up and down the coast.

"We just thought, 'Well, we have to do this'," Ms Dangermond said.

The Dangermonds stumped up $225 million to buy the 10,000 hectare tract of land and save it for all time by donating it to The Nature Conservancy, which raises money to buy up tracts of threatened land all over the world, including Australia.

When told of the donation, The Nature Conservancy's Mike Bell "didn't believe what I was hearing".

Reaction to the deal in conservation circles has been ecstatic; it comes at a time when the Trump administration is seeking to roll back environmental protection.

"It was a big news for conservation, and conservation hadn't been getting a lot of good news lately," Mr Bell said.

"There's been a lot of controversy about our national monuments, and about a lot of environmental protection regulation that we had in place.

"This was a piece of good news, and it was a big piece of good news."

Mr Bell was central to clinching the deal, when an opportunity came up to buy the land from a hedge fund that wanted to develop the site — an old ranch made up of 10,000 hectares of pristine coast and a hinterland of oak forests, hills, canyons and grasslands.

It is not just a beauty spot and a haven for plants and animals, many of them endangered, it also includes hundreds of sites of historic significance.

Spanish explorers called it Point Conception, but for the Native American Chumash it was a place for the end of life, its waters the portal to enter the next world.

Where the warm waters from the south meet the cold northern currents, biodiversity explodes.

"It's truly a miracle that this landscape, this property exists in its natural form still," Mr Bell said.

"There's an incredible amount of biodiversity here, an extraordinary set of natural communities."

The Dangermonds are no left-wing ideologues.

Their environmental passion is founded on the hard data that drives the digital mapping which they pioneered.

"I like maps. They're a kind of language, the language of geography, the language of human activities, the language of understanding," Mr Dangermond said, speaking at the headquarters of their company in the low-key town of Redlands, California.

It is a long way from Silicon Valley, and although Mr Dangermond is known as the "godfather of the digital map" among those who are in the know, many have never heard of the pair despite their extraordinary reach.

They started their company with about $US1,500 ($2,000) in savings.

It is now valued by Forbes at about $5.5 billion.

"We just simply made a start-up," Mr Dangermond said.

"And it's just very gradually grown up to become, I guess you would call it the world leader in geographic information systems today."

'No excuse for not making good policy'

Esri's systems create complex, layered maps that are used by governments and business across the globe to help visually interpret problems and issues.

Its software is used by about 350,000 private and government organisations to predict flash floods, ease traffic snarls, help the homeless or plot the location of the next Starbucks.

If you looked, you would find its grids criss-crossing Australia.

"Having all that information available to policy makers leaves them no excuse for not making good policy," Ms Dangermond said.

Mr Dangermond added: "If we have all the science there and people are still making stupid decisions, then you can call politicians or decision makers on the carpet, so to speak."

The land the couple saved will never be developed or turned into a national park for public access.

It is a preserve, like a living laboratory.

"I think the lesson that Jack and Laura put out here to people is that protecting our world isn't a spectator sport," Mr Bell said.

"Everyone needs to get involved, everyone needs to be a leader."

The Dangermonds are in their 70s.

"We only have a limited amount of time left to do these things, so I think we have to let people know," Ms Dangermond said.

Her husband said "time is running out, it's late in the day — it's not dark yet, but it's late".

"Some phenomena are changing in such a way that it's not going to be sustainable on the planet to live here anymore, and then we've got to be able to take action.

"And it's not just one person doing action, it's not just the president or premier or somebody like that taking action, it's really us as a body taking action."

A map of the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. (Supplied/ESRI)

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Topics: environment, land-management, internet-technology, environmental-policy, conservation, united-states

First posted