User:Heatherer/Hansjorg Wyss Philanthropy

Philanthropy
According to Forbes, Wyss is "among the most philanthropic people in the world". Between 2004 and 2008, Businessweek estimated that Wyss personally donated nearly USD$277 million. His giving has increased since the sale of Synthes in 2012 and in 2013 he signed The Giving Pledge, agreeing to give away the majority of his fortune. The assets of his charitable foundations equal nearly $2 billion.

His primary philanthropic causes are the environment, social justice, and science, but he also frequently contributes to historic projects and European museums.

Environmental protection
As of 2015, Wyss and a charitable organization he founded, the Wyss Foundation, have donated more than $350 million to environmental protection, including conservation of national forests and other public lands in the Western United States.

Wyss has stated that he became passionate about the American West and land preservation after visiting the U.S. in 1958 as a student and taking a summer job as a surveyor with the Colorado Highway Department. In 1998, he created the Wyss Foundation to establish and sponsor informal partnerships between non-governmental organizations and the United States government to place large swathes of land under permanent protection in the American West. By 2006, via the initial efforts of the foundation, almost 4400000 acre of public land had been labeled as national monuments and national conservation areas. The Wyss Foundation's landscape protection strategies have included assisting the purchase of mineral leases from oil and gas companies. Other causes the Wyss Foundation supports includes river restorations, ocean conservation in Peru and Canada, anti-poaching efforts in Africa, and environmental journalism. It also sponsors The Wyss Scholars Program for graduate-level education in conservation.

In addition to the Wyss Foundation's land protection activity, in 2010, Wyss personally gave The Nature Conservancy $35 million to purchase 310,000 acres in Montana as part of one of the largest private conservation purchases in the United States. He donated $4.25 million to The Trust for Public Land in 2013 for the purchase of oil and gas leases in Wyoming to prevent development in the Hoback Basin.

Wyss is involved with The Wilderness Society, Rails-to-Trails, and serves on the boards of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Center for American Progress, and the Grand Canyon Trust. In 2011, Wyss won the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society for his conservation work.

In January 2015, conservative U.S. news site The Daily Caller accused John Podesta, who was at the time an advisor on environmental issues to the Obama administration, of an ethics violation for pushing the advocacy agenda of a former employer, because he had previously received $87,000 as a consulting fee for work he did for Wyss' HJW Foundation in 2013 (that organization was later merged with the Wyss Foundation). It was also noted that the Wyss Foundation had previously donated $4 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), which Podesta founded. According to the High Country News, "nothing ever came of the accusations".