Evil Corporation Donates Money To Save Environment
Wal-Mart Donates $35 Million for Conservation and Will Be Partner With Wildlife Group
By STEPHANIE STROM
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Published: April 13, 2005
Barely a week after environmentalists forged a broad alliance with organized labor and community groups to attack Wal-Mart and its business practices, the company announced Tuesday that it would donate $35 million over the next decade to an ambitious new conservation effort by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The gift will be used to buy land or secure conservation easements, legal agreements limiting development on a piece of property to protect its ecological value. The land will consolidate existing nature preserves to protect larger areas from development and encroachment
For instance, the purchase of two ranches spanning 1,200 acres will pull together 850,000 acres of protected lands from the Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, home to one of the largest remaining stands of old-growth ponderosa pine and a sanctuary for California condors.
Some $6 million of the money will be spent on an agreement to protect 312,000 acres of contiguous land between 600,000 acres of protected land in New Brunswick, Canada, and 200,000 acres protected by the State of Maine. The purchase will create an area of roughly 1 million acres of protected land, with more than 50 lakes, 1,500 miles of rivers and streams and 54,000 acres of wetlands, home to 10 percent of Maine's famous loon population.
"I cannot overstate the importance of this," John Berry, the executive director of the foundation, said of the Maine agreement. "This is like a Noah's Ark for Eastern wildlife species, everything from big stuff like moose to frogs and salamanders."
The program created by Wal-Mart and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, called Acres for America, intends to acquire 138,000 acres eventually using Wal-Mart's gift, as much land as the company projects that its American stores, parking lots and supply centers will occupy in 10 years.
"It helps demonstrate that economic growth and development can go hand in hand with conservation," said Sarah Clark, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, the nation's largest company.
Ms. Clark said the gift was probably the company's largest single grant to a nonprofit group. It will come directly from the company's coffers, unlike most of Wal-Mart's philanthropy, which is administered by its foundation.
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