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Saving Chile’s southern wilderness

February 26, 2009

It is not every day that a Wall Street bank finds itself in possession of a chunk of land 50 times the size of Manhattan, covered in pristine forest, windswept grassland and snow-capped mountains.

But that's the position Goldman Sachs found itself in, in 2002 when it bought a package of distressed debt and assets from a US company called Trillium.

The resulting conservation project in the very south of Chile has been hailed by the bank and its partners, a US-based NGO, as an example of how the public and private sectors can work together to safeguard the world's last remaining wildernesses.

So it took what some environmentalists now regard as a radical and enlightened step - it gave the land away to a New York-based environmental group, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
WCS President Steve Sanderson says the donation marked a watershed in conservation policy, not only because Goldman Sachs gave the land away, but also because it pledged around $12m of its own money to ensure the land's protection for years to come.
The reserve is home to around 700 plant species, including several types of moss which are thought to be unique to these islands, and is teeming with birds including condors, eagles and Patagonian woodpeckers.

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