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Marking a precedent-setting conservation partnership, Apple and the Conservation Fund will purchase two large areas of working forest, the organizations announced on Thursday. The move is expected to conserve “more than 36,000 acres of working forestland in Maine and North Carolina, ensuring these forests stay forests and any timber on the land is harvested sustainably,” the partners said in a joint announcement.
This initial purchase of U.S. working forestland marks “the beginning of a worldwide effort, one that represents a new approach as it reassesses its impact on the world’s paper supply chain,” Lisa P. Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, and Larry Selzer, president and CEO of the Conservation Fund, wrote in a Medium op-ed. Prior to joining Apple, Jackson led the U.S. EPA as President Barack Obama’s EPA Administrator from 2009 to 2013.
Apple will provide the financial resources for the partnership, and the Conservation Fund (TCF) will build out the legal and financial mechanism. The effort will conserve working forest land — encompassing an area larger than the city of San Francisco — in Maine’s Mattawamkeag Forest and North Carolina’s Reed Forest. Threatened with destruction, these working forest lands are of practically priceless and irreplaceable ecological and socioeconomic value, the partners said.
With the working forest conservation partnership, “Apple is clearly leading by example – one that we hope others will follow,” Selzer of the Conservation Fund stated in a joint press release. “By all accounts, the loss of America’s working forests is one of our nation’s greatest environmental challenges. The initiative announced today is precedent-setting.”
Coniferous forest image via Shutterstock.
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