Ikea buys 11,000 acres of forest in Georgia to protect it from development
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Most of the stores of the Swedish retail giant are owned and operated by the Ingka Group -- which announced on January 14 that it purchased 10,840 acres of land near the Altamaha River Basin.
An investment group of Ikea has acquired almost 11,000 acres of forestland in southeastern Georgia to protect its diverse ecosystems from development.
Most of the stores of the Swedish retail giant are owned and operated by the Ingka Group -- which announced on January 14 that it purchased 10,840 acres of land near the Altamaha River Basin.
The Ingka Group currently operates 378 of the 445 Ikea stores worldwide.
The land, acquired from non-profit conservation organisation The Conservation Fund, is home to more than 350 plant and wildlife species.
Before the European migration to North America, the longleaf pine forest covered more than 90 million acres from southern Virginia to Florida, and as far west as Texas.
But less than 4% of that forest is left, due to land clearing for development and agriculture, and various other factors.
Notably, since 2014, Ingka Investments has bought around 612,821 acres of forestland in the US, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
In the US, the group owns forest properties in Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
The company has also planted close to 7 million seedlings in countries all over the world.