Apple and The Conservation Fund Partner on Forest Sustainability

The Conservation Fund is partnering with Apple to help protect working forests in North America. The Apple initiative will conserve more than 36,000 acres of working forestlan, ensuring these forests stay forests and any timber on the land is harvested sustainably.

"Apple is clearly leading by example — one that we hope others will follow," said Larry Selzer, CEO of The Conservation Fund. Evan Smith, The Conservation Fund's VP of Conservation Ventures (pictured to the right), added, "Forests are essential to the future of our environmental health and economic vitality. It’s crucial that we work together to protect them." We couldn't agree more.

Apple stated, "We are committed to protecting — and creating — as much sustainable working forest as is needed to produce the paper in our product packaging. Through our work with The Conservation Fund, we're permanently protecting more than 36,000 acres of working forests. The collective annual production from these forests is equivalent to nearly half the virgin fiber used for iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, and Apple TV packaging in a given fiscal year."

Apple's initiative protects forestlands through The Conservation Fund's Working Forest Fund (WFF). Pioneered by the Fund in the late 1990s, the program is an entirely new model for acquiring and permanently protecting ecologically significant portions of America's last, large, intact privately-held forests. The program places conservation easements on the land, which ensure sustainable harvests and restrict the subdivision or conversion of land to non-forest uses. In addition, this land can only be sold with the conservation easements intact, and sale proceeds are reinvested to protect other vulnerable forestlands.

WFF also uses forest management strategies to enhance forest health and productivity, wildlife habitat, CO2 sequestration and water quality, while supporting the economic vitality of surrounding communities.