Lululemon Athletica Inc founder Chip Wilson is making his biggest philanthropic gift ever — and one of the largest among ultra-rich Canadians — to help protect vast tracts of wilderness in the western part of the country.
Wilson and his wife, Summer, have pledged C$100 million (US$75.8 million) through their foundation to acquire wilderness space in British Columbia.
The province is home to 5.3 million people and has temperate rainforests, rocky coastlines, snowcapped mountains and even desert lands in an area larger than Germany and France combined.
Photo: Reuters
The money is to be used by the British Columbia Parks Foundation to buy forests and repurchase mining, forestry and other resource licenses, turning “massive amounts of land” into parks that indigenous groups would manage and use for revenue-making purposes such as tourism, Wilson said in an interview.
“Our vision for our family is providing components for people to live a longer, healthier and more fun life. So it all kind of fits,” said Wilson, 67, whose US$5.8 billion fortune is derived primarily from his 9 percent stake in the athletic clothing company he started in Vancouver.
The couple, who live in Vancouver, are hoping to encourage matching donations from governments, businesses and other philanthropists to advance the foundation’s goal of protecting 25 percent of the province’s land and water.
They are setting few conditions on spending the funds, which could happen “quite quickly,” said Chip Wilson, Canada’s 13th-wealthiest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Preserving land in this way is a good investment for philanthropists because it does not require much effort, he said on Bloomberg Television.
“For people whose time is precious and they want something that lasts forever, I can’t think of a better place to put their money,” he said.
The province has long been a battleground between environmentalists and resource developers.
At times, protests and violence have broken out over forestry projects and energy pipelines, including two that are under construction, the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion and the Coastal GasLink line that would supply a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant on the coast.
Resource development does not have to live in contradiction with wilderness preservation, Wilson said.
Canadian energy such as LNG could bring in billions of dollars that could be used to protect wildlife and nature, he said.
“That would totally offset any kind of blemish” from the pipelines, he said.
The foundation has already earmarked some of the money to protect three areas, including the Falling Creek Sanctuary in northeast British Columbia, Teit’s Sanctuary at the confluence of the Thompson and Nicola rivers and Bourguiba Springs in the south Okanagan region. The group is also looking at other areas in the northern part of the province for protection.
“We’ve been lucky enough to travel the world and see how the impact of industrial approach has affected places that had previously been pristine,” Summer Wilson said. “I want to make sure that we preserve this province to the same level of beauty that awed me when I first came here.”
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