Publication date: Sep 15, 2022 • 23 min ago • 4 min read • 17 comments Chip Wilson and Summer Wilson on Sep 15, 2022. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

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Vancouver billionaire Chip Wilson and his wife Summer committed $100 million Thursday to the BC Parks Foundation, a donation the agency’s CEO called “rocket fuel” in the group’s fight to protect pristine habitat.

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The foundation has already put the donations — the largest gift in Canadian conservation history, said CEO Andy Day — to work to protect 311 hectares of land in three locations, ranging from the northeastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the southeastern desert. Start your day with a roundup of BC-focused news and opinion delivered straight to your inbox at 7am, Monday to Friday. By clicking the subscribe button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300

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“They’re beautiful tracts of land,” Summer Wilson, perhaps better known as Shannon, said of the three sanctuaries: Falling Creek Sanctuary near Chetwynd, Teit’s Sanctuary at Spences Bridge and Bourguiba Springs outside Osoyoos. In announcing the donation, Summer said “being outside in nature, the movement, is how we came together as a family” and signing up to the foundation’s goals that align with their own vision and goals. Chip Wilson said it struck him that the properties the foundation zeroes in on are extremely important to protect.

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“I think that’s it, it’s the really small, really special areas that they’re occupying right now, like the headlands or the backwaters, that if we don’t get it now, it would be a huge loss.” Day said the record-setting donation takes the foundation’s movement “to a whole new level.” “Around the world, this is a critical decade to take action on climate change and biodiversity loss,” Day said, so there is no time to waste. The Wilsons’ donation, made through their family’s Wilson 5 Foundation, also helped the BC Parks Foundation launch its 25 x 25 campaign, to work with Indigenous peoples to protect 25 wild places by 2025. Day said it’s a contribution to Canada’s overall commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to protect 25 per cent of B.C.’s lands and waters, and perhaps some pressure to move government action forward. The UN Convention calls on signatory states to protect 25% of natural landscapes by 2025 and 30% by 2030 as the minimum necessary to maintain biodiversity on the planet.

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“Right now we’re about 18 percent of British Columbia protected, about 13 1/2 percent of Canada,” Day said. “Getting to 25% by 2025 is a huge goal. It’s seven million hectares.” To date, the BC Parks Foundation’s contribution to this has been the creation of 18 nature reserves, including the three announced Thursday, and more than 5,000 hectares of land, Day said. And it adds to the latest major donation to the foundation, $14.5 million from Richmond-born tech entrepreneur Dax Dasilva to protect the Pitt River Watershed and French Creek Estuary areas on Vancouver Island. The Wilsons previously used $4 million of their Lululemon fortune to support the preservation of Douglas fir ecosystems in the Salish Sea region, and earlier this year they committed $100 million to medical research into a rare, genetic form of muscular dystrophy.

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Chip Wilson also raised eyebrows by contributing $380,000 of his own money to start a political action group aimed at electing right-wing candidates to city councils. Day said the BC Parks Foundation received the Wilsons’ donation as a matching gift, which it hopes will inspire another $100 million in gifts and partnerships with businesses, government and other foundations. “We have a path (to 25 per cent protection), it can only happen with the federal government, the provincial government and aboriginal governments working together,” Day said. The BC Parks Foundation is a private foundation and, although independent of BC Parks, is an official philanthropic partner, and its announcement Thursday was also inspiring for another BC conservationist.

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“These three areas are not huge in terms of hectares, but they include important examples of habitats that are currently massively underrepresented in our network of protected areas,” said Jens Weiting, senior campaigner for the Sierra Club of BC. And Weiting hopes private sector leadership will inspire the province to move faster in contributing to Canada’s commitment to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. “But it’s very important to look at both hectares and conservation values ​​because we have a lot of rock and ice in the current network of protected areas,” Weiting said. BC Parks Foundation’s new protected areas cover much of the province. Falling Creek Sanctuary, 45 kilometers west of Chetwynd, is a 213-hectare site in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in northeastern BC. on the shared territory of the Saulteau, West Moberley and McLeod First Nations. With extensive old-growth forests, the land is zoned for industrial use, but is also important wintering habitat for moose, caribou, deer and other mountain ungulates.

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Teit’s Sanctuary, named after renowned ethnographer James Teit, is an 81-acre specimen of pristine grassland adjacent to the Fraser Canyon village of Spences Bridge at the confluence of the Thompson and Nicola rivers. The land is on Nlaka’pamux First Nation territory and habitat for species such as bighorn sheep that have seen populations plummet due to disease and habitat loss. Bourguiba Springs, three kilometers southwest of Osoyoos, is a well-known 17-hectare biodiversity hot spot, historically important to South Okanagan bighorn sheep and home to seven federally-listed endangered species. The springs and the surrounding area are located in the hottest and driest biogeoclimatic zone of BC. in an area with few protected areas. [email protected] twitter.com/derrickpenner Andrew Day of the BCParks Foundation. Photo Francis Georgian /PNG
Chip Wilson and Summer Wilson on September 15, 2022. Summer Wilson and Chip Wilson on September 15, 2022.

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