In 2018, The Wyss Foundation made a three year, $750,000 commitment to help the Dehcho First Nation in Canada’s Northwest Territories establish an Indigenous guardians program to conduct on-the-ground co-management of the proposed 3.5 million acre Edéhzhíe National Wildlife Area. The Decho have already declared the are area an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area and is eager to see the federal government complete protection of the area as a National Wildlife Area as soon as possible.
Read MoreThe Wyss Campaign for Nature is partnering with the Ktunaxa Nation Council and the Nature Conservancy of Canada to support permanent protection of Qat’Muk – also known as the Jumbo Mountain – as an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in the Central Purcell Mountains of British Columbia.
Read MoreIn December 2019, The Wyss Foundation helped establish the 216,222-acre Gayini Nimmie-Caira Indigenous Protected Area in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin. The land has been deeded to the Nari Nari people — an indigenous Australian tribe — for long-term stewardship to ensure the area’s incredible biodiversity and vital environmental water flows continue in perpetuity.
Read MoreThe Blackfeet people’s ancestral homelands were stolen through dishonest and inequitable treaties during the 1800’s. After a decades-long effort by the Blackfeet Nation to safeguard their cultural and traditional homeland, the Badger-Two Medicine and the Rocky Mountain Front were permanently withdrawn from future mineral leasing in 2006. The Wyss Foundation has provided over $3.5 million to support the purchase or donation and permanent retirement of more than 140,000 acres of oil and gas leases in the area. An effort is now underway to ensure the Badger-Two Medicine is not only permanently protected, but that the Blackfeet Nation has a meaningful management role in securing their homeland in perpetuity.
Read MoreThe Wyss Foundation contributed $5 million towards the protection of the Blue Creek Salmon Sanctuary, part of a project that returned 47,000 acres of ancestral homeland to the Yurok Tribe of California’s Klamath Basin. With acquisition of the land completed, Western Rivers Conservancy is now transitioning this spiritually significant and ecologically critical landscape to the Yurok and in the process, transitioning the land from commercial timber harvest to management by the Yurok as a salmon sanctuary (approximately 15,000 acres) and sustainable working forest (approximately 32,000 acres).
Read MoreDesignated in 2019, the 5.7 million acre Thaidene Nene National Park Reserve and Territorial Protected Areas are a key source of subsistence and hold deep spiritual value to the Łutsël K’é Dene people. This complex stands as the largest single area ever permanently protected with the help of Hansjörg Wyss and Wyss Foundation philanthropy, and we anticipate that an additional 730,000 acre territorial wildlife area will be added to the complex in 2021. Thanks to Wyss Foundation support, the Łutsël K’é Dene have the long-term resources to co-manage their traditional homeland alongside Parks Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories.
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