PR Newswire
June 8, 2021
The Wyss Foundation today announced a commitment of up to $108M to African Parks, a South African based conservation NGO that manages protected areas on behalf of governments across the continent. This transformational commitment is part of Mr. Hansjorg Wyss's visionary Wyss Campaign for Nature, a $1B investment in helping nations, NGO's and indigenous communities conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 and is one of the largest single gifts ever made to the conservation of Protected Areas in Africa.
The Foundation's commitment will be made over an initial five-year period to support up to half of the annual budgets of nine existing parks currently under African Parks' management in Angola, Benin, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe; as well as support the addition of five new parks (which are yet to be identified) and up to two-thirds of their annual budgets. The funding for these new parks will come with a matching requirement with the goal of enticing new and diversified funders to provide needed stability for these landscapes. The grant overall serves a critical need in long-term and sustainable, multi-year financing, providing critical support for a park's operating budget, which can vary between $1.5M to $4M per year.