The Wyss Foundation

The $1.5-billion Wyss Campaign for Nature was launched in 2018 by the Wyss Foundation with the ambitious goal of helping to protect 30 per cent of the planet by 2030. The Campaign is partnering with many organizations, including the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), to safeguard the natural environment and confront the global biodiversity crisis.

The Wyss Foundation is a private, charitable foundation dedicated to supporting initiatives in areas from conservation and education to economic opportunity and social justice. Since 2019, the foundation has generously supported some of NCC’s greatest efforts across the country.

In 2019 and 2020, the Wyss Foundation first provided NCC with funding to support the Cree Nation Government in implementing a conservation strategy for Eeyou Istchee, the traditional territory and homeland of the Cree people in northern Quebec. Since 2015, NCC has been helping the Cree Nation Government and the Cree communities of Eeyou Istchee to implement the strategy for the 400,000-square-kilometre area.

“Indigenous Peoples and local communities are deploying a variety of time-tested and innovative strategies to conserve lands, oceans and wildlife. For the sake of all living beings, we believe this work should be supported, scaled-up and replicated across Canada and the globe.” – Molly McUsic, president of the Wyss Foundation.

Other successful projects followed, including:

• Jumbo Valley (Rocky Mountain Trench, British Columbia)
• Tenh Dẕetle Conservancy (Stikine, British Columbia)
• Incomappleux Valley (Rocky Mountain Trench, British Columbia)

In August of 2022, the Wyss Foundation donated $5.2 million (US$4 million) toward NCC’s protection of a massive 1,450-square-kilometre area in Ontario known as the Boreal Wildlands. This landscape has incredible value, with its sprawling network of rivers and streams, vast carbon-storing peatlands and seemingly endless stretches of interior forest. Canada’s boreal forest is often call “the lungs of the Earth,” and the Boreal Wildlands alone store more than 192 million tonnes of CO2e, equivalent to the average lifetime emissions of three million cars.

Wyss Foundation philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss has had a lifelong love of North America’s open landscapes and mountains. He created the foundation in 1998 with the goal of ensuring these natural places live on and our connection to the land grows. 

This aim strongly aligns with NCC’s core mission, and we thank the Wyss Foundation for its ongoing support to protect our planet.