Impassioned about the importance of the Amazon's thick jungle, D.C. philanthropists Victoria and Roger W. Sant have pledged to donate $20 million to the World Wildlife Fund to help create a huge conservation area in the Brazilian tropical forest.
Parts of the Amazon River basin, one of the world's most biologically rich places, are rapidly being bulldozed for ranching, farming, logging and other development.
The Sants' money, in the form of a trust, will be used to further the goal of permanently protecting 125 million acres, an area roughly the size of California. It is the largest individual gift the World Wildlife Fund has received.
The Sants have donated millions for other environmental causes, teen pregnancy prevention and the arts. The idea of giving to the Amazon was appealing to them because it was so ambitious. It also helped that they have made several trips to the region to see it for themselves.
"This is the biggest conservation idea that anyone has come up with so far in the world," Roger Sant said. "I just got intrigued that if we could pull this off, it would set the stage for a lot of other conservation efforts we need to make."
Sant, a former board chairman and current board member of the World Wildlife Fund, said he has been to the Amazon five times, the most recent just two weeks ago. He and his wife, a member of the fund's National Council, flew to Manaus, Brazil, with the plan of staying in a scientists' camp an hour away.
Just getting to the site took some doing. One vehicle in their convoy was stuck in mud for an hour and a half. Once at the camp, the Sants -- whose net worth has been described as being in the hundreds of millions -- slept outdoors in hammocks.
"It's an incredibly moist place," Sant said. "You hear hundreds and hundreds of birds. You don't see many because [the vegetation is] so thick. It's incredibly powerful to see that much vegetation in one place . . . seemingly an endless thing. The frogs are gorgeous -- really colorful and a bit dangerous. You keep your distance."
The jungle is a "sea of colors," he said, and so densely forested that some parts of it are dark, even during the day.
They also were stunned, on their recent visit, to see 60-foot trees being felled to make way for soy farming. "That was a real eye-opener," he said. "If that forest is worth more to grow soy than to keep it as a forest, we've got our priorities messed up."
Sant, whose fortune comes from AES Corp., an energy company he founded and led for more than two decades, is especially engrossed with the Amazon forest's role in countering global warming. Vast forests such as those in the Amazon absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide, a so-called greenhouse gas that is thought to contribute to global warming and climate change. In that sense, he said, preserving the forest is worth trillions of dollars.
The Amazon Region Protected Area initiative began four years ago, with the World Wildlife Fund working with the Brazilian government, World Bank and others. It has set the goal of establishing 70 million acres of new strictly protected areas, transforming 31 million acres of neglected parkland into better-managed conservation zones and setting aside 22 million acres of "sustainable use reserves" to benefit local communities.
The money from the Sants comes in the form of a charitable remainder trust, meaning that they get income from it during their lifetimes and the wildlife fund receives the principal upon their deaths.The Washington Post
