Swiss philanthropist donates $ 1-billion to conservation efforts, including an Indigenous Protected Area in the Northwest Territories

A Swiss businessman and philanthropist will donate a billion dollars over the next decade to protect the Earth's lands and waters, and one of the first projects in the Indigenous Protected Area in Canada's Northwest Territories.

Hansjorg Wyss, 83, announced during a teleconference from Washington on Wednesday the launch of the Wyss Campaign for Nature. Its objective is to convince world leaders, who will meet in 2020 to set biodiversity preservation targets, to agree to retain 30 per cent of the world in its natural state by 2030. That would double the amount of planetary surface that is currently protected.

To start that effort, Mr. Wyss and his foundation have named the first nine projects that will receive money from the fund. They are spread across 13 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe to Romania to Colombia, and cover 10 million acres of land and another 17,000 square kilometers of ocean.

One of them is the Edehzhie, a 14,250-square-kilometer plateau west of Great Slave Lake that was declared an Indigenous Protected Area by the federal government in October. A grant of $ 750,000 over three years from the Wyss Foundation will help the Dehcho First Nations to establish a program of Indigenous guardians who will monitor the ecological health of the region.

The first instalment of $ 275,000 has already been paid by Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group which is collaborating with the First Nations.

"Why do I make this commitment?" Asked Mr. Wyss during the teleconference. "I developed a lifelong experience of conservation and management of the world. As a young student and exchange student in the Rocky Mountains in 1958 [I] discover public lands, how wonderful they are, how free they are, and how much they enrich your spirit. "

Mr. Wyss, who was born into a humble family in Bern, is a civil and structural engineer who has earned his fortune as a founder of the Synthes, a division of a Swiss-based medical-device manufacturer. He has an estimated net worth of more than $ 5-billion and has extensively given to environmental, scientific, and social-justice causes.

Over 40,000 acres of land around the globe, Mr. Wyss's foundation invested more than $ 450-million to help protect nearly.

"I hope with this effort we can inspire citizens, policy-makers, and other philanthropists to help accelerate the protections of Earth's lands, waters and wildlife before it's too late," said Mr. Wyss.

The new campaign will be conducted with the help of The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental organization dedicated to protecting the land and water, and the National Geographic Society, which will document the need for conservation targets. health of the natural world.

This week, a new report from the World Wildlife Fund said global wildlife populations have fallen by 60 percent over the past decade.

Mark Tercek, President of The Nature Conservancy, who was also on the call, said his organization admires Canada's recent conservation efforts. This country has protected itself in the last decade of the world, and has committed to protecting it in the United States. In the most recent federal budget, the government set $ 1.3 billion over five years for conservation efforts, and some of that money will be used to protect the Edehzhie.

Mr. Tercek said he hoped the philanthropy of the Wyss Foundation would encourage more public financing, green bonds, ecotourism, conservation fees, and renewable energy development.

Gladys Norwegian, the great chief of the Dehcho First Nations, said, "We are very hopeful that there is light in the end of the world." tunnel, involving the youth, and the guardian program, to see through and carry our elders' words into the future. "