A Swiss philanthropist donates $ 1 billion to conservation efforts, including an Aboriginal protected area in the Northwest Territories

A Swiss businessman and philanthropist will donate a billion dollars over the next decade to protect more lands and waters off the planet. development, and one of the first projects that it will help fund is an Aboriginal Protected Area in the Northwest Territories of Canada.

Hansjorg Wyss, 83 years old. Wednesday announced at a teleconference in Washington the launch of the Wyss campaign for nature. Its goal is to convince world leaders, who will meet in 2020 to set targets for biodiversity conservation, to agree to retain 30% of the planet in its natural state by 2030. This would double the planetary surface currently protected. [19659004] To launch this 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, via Romania and Colombia, and cover 10 million acres of land and 17,000 square kilometers of ocean.

One of them is Edehzhie, 14 250 plateau-kilometer square located in the west of Great Slave Lake, declared an area for the protection of native cultures by the federal government in October. A three-year, $ 750,000 grant from the Wyss Foundation will help Deh Cho First Nations implement an Aboriginal caretaker program that will monitor the ecological health of the region.

The first payment of $ 275,000 has already been made and will be administered. Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group working with First Nations.

"Why do I have to make this commitment?" Asked Mr. Wyss at the teleconference. "Young man, I developed a long-time love for conservation when I saw too much destruction in the Swiss mountain valleys because of lifts and dams, and then I discovered that it was possible to preserve the land. As a student and exchange student in the Rocky Mountains in 1958, [I] discovered public lands, how wonderful they were, how free they were, and how much they enriched your mind. "

Wyss, born into a modest family in Bern, is a civil and structural engineer who made his fortune as the founder of Synthes USA, a division of a medical device manufacturer based in Switzerland. It has an estimated net worth of more than $ 5 billion and has devoted much to environmental, scientific and social justice causes.

Over the past two decades, Wyss' foundation has invested more than $ 450 million to protect nearly 40 million acres of land around the world.

"I hope this effort will engage citizens, policymakers, and other philanthropists to help accelerate the protection of the planet's land, water, and wildlife before it begins. be too late. "

The new campaign will be conducted with the help of The Nature Conservancy, an international environmental organization dedicated to soil and water protection, and the National Geographic Society, which will explain why conservation goals are being met. Ambitious conservation is needed to mitigate the impacts. climate change and the deterioration of the health of the natural world.

This week, a new report The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said that global wildlife populations have fallen by 60% over the last decade.

Mark Tercek, President of The Nature Conservancy, also said that his organization admired Canada's recent conservation efforts. Our country has protected just over 10% of its land and inland waters and has committed to protect 17% by 2020. In the last federal budget, the government allocated 1.3 billion over five years to conservation efforts. this money will be used to protect the Edehzhie.

Tercek said he hoped the philanthropy of the Wyss Foundation would encourage more public funding, green bonds, ecotourism, conservation royalties and renewable energy development that would contribute to strengthen the protection of the environment in Canada.

Gladys Norwegian, Grand Chief of the Dehcho First Nations, said that his people had always understood the importance of having a relationship with the land and, with the new money, "we hope very much that there is the light at the end of the tunnel, involving the youth and the guardians program. to see us through and carry the words of our elders in the future. "