Update: Hansjorg Wyss
Swiss-born billionaire Hansjorg Wyss joined the board of SUWA in 1996 and later financed a new $1.4 million Salt Lake City headquarters.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is a wilderness preservation organization in the United States based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with field offices in Washington, D.C. and Moab, Utah.
Though SUWA has been able raise large sums of money over the last decade its membership numbers have declined 30% from a high of 20,000 to 14,000 Still, SUWA maintains that 70 percent of their funding comes from membership dues and donations, and roughly 80 percent of the organization’s income is spent on program work.
The organization formed in 1983 and is a partner in the Utah Wilderness Coalition, a coalition of organizations nationwide that support federal wilderness designation for deserving public lands in Utah.
Engineered $8.2 billion leveraged buyout of newspaper giant Tribune Co. last March; beat out billionaires Eli Broad, Ron Burkle, David Geffen.
Sold real estate investment trust Equity Office Properties to Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group for $39 billion cash last February.
For billionaires with publicly traded fortunes, net worths were calculated using share prices and exchange rates from February 11, 2008.
The primary campaign of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is to build public support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, which was first introduced in Congress in 1988 by Utah Congressman Wayne Owens.
Parents fled Poland for America weeks before Nazi invasion.
Diameter of disc reflects size of fortune.
President of Synthes, a Swiss-based medical-implants and biomaterials company, has presided over the firm for 30 years, leading it to the fore of medical technology.
SUWA promotes local and national recognition of the region’s unique character through research and public education; supports both administrative and legislative initiatives to permanently protect the Colorado Plateau wild places within the National Park and National Wilderness Preservation Systems, or by other protective designations where appropriate; builds support for such initiatives on both the local and national level; and provides leadership within the conservation movement through uncompromising advocacy for wilderness preservation.
Harvard M.B.A. is also a committed environmentalist.
In May 2007, New York millionaire Bert Fingerhut, who served on the SUWA board of directors for 18 years, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy in connection with a plot to reap more than $12 million in illegal profits by circumventing rules controlling how private banks are converted to public ownership.
Although America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act gained over 100 cosponsors with each session it has never been sponsored by any other member of the Utah congressional delegation.
The bill has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since, but has yet to be debated on the floor.
Bearded baron of Chicago real estate now writing headlines.
The mission of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is the preservation of the outstanding wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau, and the management of these lands in their natural state for the benefit of all Americans.
This article about a political organization is a stub.
In October 2007 Mark Ristow, SUWA’s treasurer and a SUWA trustee for about 20 years, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in a scheme similar to Fingerhut’s.
