Philip Tabas is senior advisor with the North American Conservation Region of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) based in Arlington, Va. He served as TNC’s general counsel from 2003 to 2013. Over his 40+ year career at TNC, Tabas has led or helped negotiate numerous private land conservation and compatible economic development projects throughout the United States and in other countries, particularly involving the use of conservation easements and tax and other financial incentives. He has also drafted legislation and advocated to secure conservation tax incentive legislation at the U.S. federal and state levels of government as well as in other countries. Tabas helped lead TNC’s efforts to design conservation planning protocols to implement conservation strategies for system-scale conservation projects and facilitated TNC’s peer-to-peer learning network to build local TNC project teams’ implementation and strategic capacity. Tabas holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, a Juris Doctor degree in law, a Master of Laws degree in tax law and a Master’s degree in City Planning.

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Tabas is a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, a former member of the board of directors of The Potomac Conservancy, a member of the board of directors of Friends of Herring River, a member of the board of directors of the American Horticultural Society, a co-author of Comprehensive Planning and the Environment published by Abt Books and for a number of years, he taught a summer course titled “Ecosystem Conservation Strategies” at the Vermont Law School.