Land Acquisition – Once the fragmented lands are connected, APR will provide overall wildlife management focus

Sean Gerrity has a vision, which he is rapidly turning into reality. Through the American Prairie Reserve, of which he is president, he is creating a wilderness reserve in North America to rival the Serengeti. Darius Sanai tells the story; and over the next pages, the images of the reserve in Montana tell their own 

“In 10 to 15 years, you should see a slice of land extending 13,000 square kilometres here, the vast majority of that with no fences. There will be stunning variety of wildlife that has not been seen here for 150 years, but which was here for 1,000 years or more: thousands of bison, like the wildebeest in the Serengeti; cougars, wolves, grizzly bears in sustainable numbers. There will be all species of prey like elk and deer. It will be very easy to engage with this space: it will be a very wild place but with planned, controlled public access.”

Sean Gerrity – An ex-entrepreneur, Gerrity now commits himself to wildlife preservation

Sean Gerrity is mapping out his vision for the American Prairie Reserve (APR) on the high plateau of Montana. The idea of a kind of vast safari reserve in what has, in recent times, been farmland may sound far-fetched, but Gerrity is no empty dreamer. In his role at the APR, he has already been building the project for 15 years, purchasing and piecing together ranches and farms from owners who are giving up on farming. “Their kids want to go live in the cities and become web designers,” he says, commenting on the decline of the ranching tradition. Rather than let the area become forgotten, he and the APR are building America’s largest wilderness reserve and restocking it with species, many now endangered, that used to roam freely.

Gerrity and the APR work closely with conservation bodies like the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). The most compelling part of his vision is that he wants to build facilities for humans to come and interact and experience and enjoy the wilderness, without destroying it. “It’s a life-producing experience being out there, quite overwhelming,” he says. “All five senses are just roaring. We are building a way for people to access it, for kids to come out and just sit and listen to the sounds and forget about their electronic toys.”

Gerrity knows about the latter: in his previous life, he was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founder of a consulting company. He has now returned to his childhood home of Montana and is bringing nature back where it belongs, as the photography on these pages shows.

americanprairie.org

Prairie Heritage – Reintroduced to the prairie in 2005, the bison herd has since grown in numbers

Buffalo Watch – An American West icon, APR seeks to restore the majestic bisons in their natural habitat

The Great Outdoors – Visitors can explore the vastness of the landscape by hiking or even biking

Kestrel Camp – Located on-site, the climatecontrolled tent suites offer an intimate nature experience 5. Western Meadowlark The reserve

Pronghorn Antelopes – One of the few remaining native animals, the migration studies contribute to meaningful research

Nurturing Offspring – Numerous bison calves have been born on-site since the reintroduction of the species

Green Carpet Challenge – The brainchild of Firth has seen strong support from high-profile actresses

What are the greatest challenges Eco-Age faces moving forward?

Each business we work with involves a different challenge. But this is what we do – we help companies undertake what could seem like a huge challenge and make it easy for them! Until last year no one would have thought it possible to connect a Gucci handbag with the cows in the Amazonian forest, and yet we made it happen. Or Chopard’s stunning earrings with the miners who dig out the gold in Colombia. These are processes which take time, but as Caroline Scheufele of Chopard always says, “Rome was not built in a day”!

Rodriguez & Bottletop – The bags are made from deforestation-free leather and recycled aluminium pull tabs

What are the rewards?

Huge. Both economic rewards (to be a sustainable business means precisely this – to save money and become more agile) and social rewards – we all need to reconnect with the people at the beginning of the supply chain. This is what we strive to do at Eco-Age: help brands and businesses to establish this powerful connection.

How are businesses responding and adapting to sustainability challenges?

They are all trying to figure it out, but most importantly they all acknowledge we need to change. This is the first step to change. It is about future proofing a business, securing long term supply of consistent resources, both natural and human, and continually ensuring consumers that when they buy what you are selling, they are making a positive impact.

When clients come to us, we try to help them meet their sustainability challenges and then benefit from those improvements through business efficiency, secure supply chains, reputational benefits and ultimately, increased sales.”

eco-age.com

Campaign Ambassador – Supermodel Candice Swanepoel (left) is the face of the Rodriguez collaboration

GCC Brandmark – Narciso Rodriguez worked with Bottletop Foundation on an eco-friendly range of bags

Industry Support – Firth’s work is backed by industry heavyweights such as US Vogue Editor-in-Chief
Anna Wintour

The head of future mobility at the world’s leading luxury car manufacturer predicts that the transformation of the auto market will come slowly, but surely. Herbert Kohler

As a company, as announced a few years ago, we are preparing the platforms of our cars to adapt to hybridisation [the use of electric and combustion engines in the same car]. We have done this with very good results in the [mid-sized] E-Class, but we have to admit that the market has changed a little since: hybrids are not the only way to dramatically reduce CO₂ emissions anymore. Look at the [big SUV] M-Class and you can see that a [diesel] combustion engine by itself can reach emission rates lower than 160g CO₂/km, which is outstandingly good. Nobody would have imagined that three or four years ago.

Still, the latest development is plug-in hybrid technology [where the electric engine is powered by batteries charged by mains electricity] with the S-Class, with preparations taking place to use the technology in other cars in the future. However, that depends on market acceptance, and nobody can realistically claim to predict that. The technology is fantastic and outstanding in terms of the technical challenge and solution; there is no question about that.

But the question is: how does this technology fit in and work from the market side, from the consumers’ side? And there is not only one market. There are different markets – China, the rest of Asia, Europe, the US and the rest of the world. It will come step by step and we are all feeling our way.

There are different opinions in the market. On the one side, you have the consumers who love such developments and are more passionate and committed to sustainability. Others do not care about that sort of thing, or not that extensively. And most people have no clear idea of the technology involved. In itself, this is not a disaster. But there is a tendency to associate with the word ‘hybrid’ – that this means the car has less emissions, that it is cheap but with as good a performance as before, and that there are no restrictions in the package. Most people would like to have all that without the additional costs – it’s a very attractive idea.

An important point to make is that [car manufacturers] cannot survive solely on the purchases of those who are really committed, on the consumers who say, “I really want to have that technology, and I will bear the extra costs because I know it is a positive thing to do”. I would say that they are less than five per cent of the market. You cannot build a business on less than five per cent.

There is a global move towards reducing emissions. China and Japan are in the same situation as Europe and the US. If you sum up the volumes of these countries, it adds up to more than 50 per cent of the world market, so it is clear we have to be guided by that. And then there’s the requirement for high technology and specification, from the Middle East, for instance, and such markets might not be as interested in the consumption side.

It is not possible to predict the future with certainty, as we all know. But we think there is strong movement behind plug-in hybrid motoring technology. I remember seven or eight years ago, when the first realistic ideas were being aired about plug-in hybrids. The initiative actually came from our Van department. Due to some requirements in the US, they asked if we were planning to do a plug-in hybrid. Our response at that time was, “Is this really necessary?”

My reason for recounting this is that there is a lot of development going on and there are a lot of new ideas, so it’s very difficult to say today what will happen in the next 10 years. I do think we will have more plug-ins in the future, because we’ve got good technical solutions without the compromise of additional costs or the lack of driveability. Nobody would want a luxury hybrid car with an electric mode that drives very slowly; nobody would pay for that. We are convinced that the time will come for [hydrogen] fuel cell and hybrid cars and that will bring us additional momentum, not being appropriate at the moment for the entire portfolio. But certainly [compact cars] will go in that direction for the next generation, and it will conquer other segments step by step. The technology is a given, we can do it, but it is also important not to swallow too much from the beginning. We need to do it step by step.

Our biggest challenge in all this is infrastructure [the network of electrical charging points for plug-in cars, which is mostly incomplete or non-existent around the world]. We will not get involved with it because it is not our core business and we are not willing to compete against energy suppliers – that would not make sense for us. We therefore have to rely on those who are more interested in it to grow in that direction. And sometimes there aren’t enough companies who wish to develop in that direction, so there is always an intensive struggle behind the curtain about that. This is one of the biggest challenges, but of course we also have a lot of technical challenges, as with any new technology. On the engineering side we have developed a very good cooperation with Nissan and Ford.

To showcase our technologies on this front is the S-Class [the new large saloon launched at the end of last year] for several reasons: it has autonomous and semi-autonomous driving modes, the most advanced safety features, and a plug-in hybrid solution. It shows everything we can do right now.

Professor Herbert Kohler is Chief Environmental Officer of Daimler AG, parent company of Mercedes-Benz; mercedes-benz.com