A gopher turtle in a national park in the USA
Moscow. January 31st. INTERFAX.RU – The Swedish retail chain IKEA bought 11 840 acres (4450 hectares) of forest in Georgia (USA) in order to preserve a unique ecosystem and prevent construction and use of resources in industry there. CNN clarifies that IKEA has bought land in the Altamaha River Basin.
The company said that it is trying to conduct business responsibly and believes that more forests need to be restored than is used in production.
IKEA bought the area from an environmental organization, and the woodland is home to over 350 plant and animal species. Including the endangered gopher turtle and swamp pine. Before the arrival of Europeans in North America, this pine covered more than 90 million acres from Virginia to Florida, in Georgia pine forests dominated the south of the state. Now less than 4% of these forests remain, which existed before.
The Swedish company stressed that it will continue to support the local woodworking industry, and residents will have access to most of the forest area.
In 2014, IKEA and its parent company bought about 613,000 acres (248,072 ha) of woodland in the United States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
