Press

August 9, 2000

The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, The Cascades Conservation Partnership and EcologyFund.com come together to protect endangered forest

Boston - The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, The Cascades Conservation Partnership, and EcologyFund.com announced today a new campaign to save 75,000 acres of endangered habitat in the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington near Seattle. These lands include most of the old-growth forest that remains in private hands in the state of Washington, containing 800-year old trees currently threatened by logging efforts.

The Cascades Conservation Partnership is a coalition of environmental groups including the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, the Seattle Audubon Society, Pacific Crest Biodiversity Project, the Alpine Lakes Protection Society, and the Washington Trails Association. Its goal is to raise $25 million in private donations over the next three years and persuade Congress to match the private donations with an additional $100 million from the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Visitors to EcologyFund.com will be able to take part in the effort by simply clicking on the Cascade Mountain Range project on the website. Each "click" will trigger a financial donation to the project form one of EcologyFund.com's corporate sponsors. Every EcologyFund.com visitor can save 299 square feet of wilderness land in North and South American everyday, including in the Cascade Mountain Range, simply with the click of a mouse.

The 75,000 acres of threatened Cascades land is critical to the survival of native wildlife whose populations will become isolated and decline without connected tracts of habitat. More than 1,000 species of Cascades wildlife depend on this land, including the gray wolf, grizzly bear, spotted owl and great gray owl.

"This effort will provide the vital missing link in a chain of wild lands and protected areas from southern British Columbia to Northern California," said Mitch Friedman, Executive Director of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance.

"EcologyFund.com has always had a commitment to protecting land in the United States and Canada, and our work with The Cascades Conservation Partnership is the perfect example of that," added Tim Kunin, founder of EcologyFund.com. "This project brings together leading environmental groups from all over the country and I feel confident that we will make great progress in protecting this critical habitat."

In addition to the wildlife habitat links that the project will be protecting, the Cascades land and old-growth forest is a popular recreation area for people from all over the world. The area includes 15,000 acres of old-growth forest, 15 lakes, 26 miles of rivers, 12 salmon-spawning streams, 45 miles of hiking trails, and 22,000 acres of road-less wilderness. Many of these trails are just one hour from Seattle, including sections of the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail that winds 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada.

EcologyFund.com is a grassroots movement that has harnessed the power of the Internet to save land in the world's most treasured natural habitats. EcologyFund.com is the first "click-to-donate" site that helps preserve land and protect endangered species in both North and South America.

Each visitor to EcologyFund.com can save 299 square feet of wilderness land all over the world, each day, with less than a minute spent on the site. Since the launch of the site in February of this year, EcologyFund.com has attracted more than 50,000 visitors who have donated funds to protect more than 74 million square feet of land in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Amazon Basin, and Patagonia. Other wilderness sites in the United States that have benefited from donations include the Stephen Mather Wilderness within North Cascades National Park, the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness of Colorado, and the Trinity Alps Wilderness in Northern California.

EcologyFund.com sponsors supporting the Cascades project include Novica, CharityMall, ENN, and WineAccents.com. Other site sponsors include iPrint.com, Cool Savings and Working Assets.

EcologyFund.com founder Tim Kunin is available for interviews: [email protected] or 781-461-6161.

PRESS CONTACT:
Jessica Frost, Publicity Director
CharityMall.com/EcologyFund.com
216 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104
ph: 734-213.7777
fx: 734-913-5555
[email protected]