Enviva Announces $5 Million Conservation Fund

Enviva Announces $5 Million Conservation Fund
by Jenny Callison – Greater Wilmington Business Journal

Enviva Holdings LP, the Maryland-based company that is building a wood pellet plant in Sampson County and pellet storage facilities at the Port of Wilmington, announced Thursday 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.

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.

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