Patagonia's idea of a global investment

EARLIER THIS YEAR, A TITANIUM MINE WAS SLATED for construction on the edge of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, an unusually diverse ecosystem that is home to some of the country's most pristine wetlands. If built, the mine would likely have unleashed catastrophic pollution in the area.

- DAVID GELLES

Then in June, the project was called off. In a stunning deal, the company behind the mine announced it had reached a $60 million agreement to sell the site of the proposed project to a group of conservationists. There would be no titanium mining on the edge of the Okefenokee, after all.

It was a hefty price to pay for a tract of backwater marshland, but the conservationists had deep-pocketed backers, including Patagonia, the outdoor-apparel brand founded by rock climber Yvon Chouinard.

Two million dollars of the funds used to protect Okefenokee came from the Holdfast Collective, a group of nonprofit entities that since 2022 has donated the profits generated by Patagonia to nonprofit groups fighting climate change.

It is an arrangement unlike almost anything else in corporate America. Rather than distributing earnings to shareholders, or letting executives keep the money for themselves, Patagonia gives away most everything it makes.

That kind of philanthropy is unusual in an age when many billionaires flaunt their wealth with megayachts and Wall Street firms work to extract profits from their investments. But it is a structure that is in keeping with Patagonia's unique history of charity and conservationism.

Back in 1972, when Chouinard was still making rock-climbing gear, he heard about a plan to divert and develop the mouth of the Ventura River, which flowed just behind his office and then into the Pacific Ocean, shaping one of the best surf breaks in California. If the plan went ahead, the waves that drew Chouinard to Ventura in the first place could be gone.

Beyond the waterway's importance to the surf, Chouinard and his pals knew that as recently as the 1940s, the Ventura had been a major spawning ground for thousands of steelhead trout and Chinook salmon. But over the years, the river had been dammed upstream, drying it up and killing the fish.