ABC7.com Green Content - Disney donates to save forests

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By Barbara Kessler

Green Right Now

While the world scrambles to find clean energy solutions, somewhere, every minute of every day, saws buzz through a forest, cutting down one of nature’s antidotes to carbon pollution.

Each year the world loses about 50,000 square miles of wooded lands, enough to fill an area the size of Pennsylvania. The rapid clearing of tropical forests accounts for nearly 20 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions (partly due to trees being burned) — more than all transportation vehicles combined.

Increasingly, though, companies and non-profits are trying to stem the loss of woodlands to curb global warming and save habitat and native economies.

On Tuesday, The Walt Disney Company announced it will invest $7 million to save and restore forests in the Amazon, the Congo and the United States.

The projects aim to fight climate change, improve the quality of life in local communities and save jeopardized wildlife from gorillas in Africa to songbirds in North America.

“Disney has always been a conservation leader,” said Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger, in a statement. “Now, more than ever, it’s essential to take swift action to preserve our most vulnerable natural environments for future generations and to be innovative in achieving that goal.”

Rainforest Management in the Congo and the Amazon

Disney is giving $4 million to increase protection of forests in the Tayna and Kisimba-Ikobo Community Reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Alto Mayo conservation project in Peru, two vital tropical forest regions.

The programs, managed ...

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