A biologist realtor

Biologist Don King has spent years watching precious things disappear. As an educational tour guide in New Mexico in 1981, King led a group through a Navajo village on the way to ruins in Chaco Canyon. They came upon a funeral in the hybrid Catholic-Navajo church for the village medicine man. With his death, hundreds of years of history and culture disappeared, since the local children weren't interested in learning traditional ways, preferring to adopt mainstream American culture.

Born in Florida, he graduated in 1981 from the University of West Florida with a BS degree in marine biology and education. Ten years later in Guam, King taught college prep classes and worked as an environmental consultant, and watched while Japanese developers bought up beaches where the locals still fished with stone traps. In his impact studies, King tried to advise factories and resort builders against developing pristine bays and wetlands; sometimes he was successful, sometimes not.

Too often, conservationists find themselves butting heads with realtors who want nothing more than to replace pristine coastal ecosystems with luxury living spaces that have a much-coveted ocean view. King decided to take an unusual step: he became a beachfront realtor himself. Now, he claims he's found a way to both sell prime property and protect precious natural resources.

King works and lives in Panama, the newest hotspot off the Caribbean Sea. Panama City, in particular, is experiencing a development explosion, and King uses some of the proceeds to fund his local conservation efforts. "I'm not a realtor, I'm a biologist," says King. "Unfortunately, [being a realtor] is the only way I can do the other things I do."

King's real estate company, Bocas Del Toro Real Estate, is still a modest operation, with seven employees including King and his wife. Currently, the company manages fewer than a dozen properties and has about 100 for sale. Some properties are worth as little as $20,000, whereas others sell for millions. King characterizes his company as an "eco-friendly" form of development realty. He recently helped broker and negotiate a deal for a new resort to be built in a cow pasture, rather than the neighboring forest. He tries to encourage his buyers to observe the local mangrove laws or install composting toilets; he estimates that about half of his clients follow his eco-friendly recommendations.

King has used some of his proceeds from selling homes to establish a school in Bocas Del Toro for the native Ngobe Bugle Indian children. King also runs an experimental forestry project at Isla Bastimentos, about 16 kilometers from Bocas Del Toro, recruiting the Ngobe to help farm local plants and food, including papaya, chocolate, cilantro, and ginger, which they can subsequently sell for a profit.

He estimates that he dedicates 10% to 20% of his income from real estate to conservation and education projects. These include the school teacher's salary and traveling expenses as well as supplies for the students at his school, amounting to several thousand dollars a month. King is aware that some scientific institutions might regard him as just a realtor in a concerned biologist's clothing, but others say King's work is the lesser of two evils.

"In a perfect world we'd like a situation where conservation is funded in a way other than by selling real estate," says William Laurance, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. "But this is someone who has a sincere interest in the environment. At least he's using a part of his proceeds rather than lining his own pockets."

At a time when conservation is fashionable, Laurance is leery of programs that "give the veneer of eco-friendliness or greenness," when in reality they are "just window-dressing." He notes that King seems to have his heart in the right place, and that, he says, is "a welcome relief."