Tuesday, December 15, 2015
World’s largest wood pellet fuel manufacturer Eniviva Holdings LP, announced that it has launched a $5 million forest conservation fund.
This initiative, which Enviva said it will fund over the next 10 years until it reaches the $5 million total, is designed “to protect tens of thousands of acres of bottomland forests in northeast North Carolina and southeast Virginia,” according to the company’s news release. The fund’s goal is to act as a catalyst, attracting other conservation investments to the region, with an eye to conserving 35,000 acres of bottomland forests including low-lying, marshy areas, near rivers and streams that are home to tree species that are cypress, gum and oak. Many of these bottomlands are in the Albemarle Sound Drainage basin along the Roanoke, Chowan, Meherrin, Nottoway and Blackwater rivers.
“We are a very young company in a very new field,” Jenkins said. “We were founded just over a decade ago. What we do is new, and anytime something is new, [people] have questions about the impact that we’re having. We want to be very specific and straightforward.” He added further.
The Enviva Forest Conservation Fund, administered by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, “will award matching-fund grants to nonprofit organizations to permanently protect ecologically sensitive areas and conserve working forests,” the release stated. The geographic area of focus is the Virginia-North Carolina coastal plan, which is home to Enviva’s three wood pellet production facilities in the region and a deep-water marine terminal in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Tags: $5 million dollar, enviva holdings lp, forest conservation fund, wood pellet fuel manufacturer
