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Does tech-giant Apple still own 3,600 acres of forestland in Brunswick County? What we know

Gareth McGrath
USA TODAY NETWORK
Apple purchased nearly 3,600 acres of forest land adjacent to the Green Swamp in Brunswick County in 2015.

In 2015, Apple unveiled the iPhone 6.

That same year, the California-based technology giant teamed up with an environment group to buy 3,600 acres of forestland bordering the Green Swamp in Brunswick County. The purchase, funded by Apple, was the smaller component in a deal that also included the group buying 32,000 acres of forest in Maine.

Apple said the purchase was part of its broader environmental push to assist in maintaining the nation's working forests while managing them in a sustainable way. The goal was to keep the forests in production, using the timber as packaging for the company's multiple high-tech computer, phone and watch offerings, with a long-term plan of rehabilitating the pocosin forest and eventually turning it over to a third party for management.

Along with serving as a wood source and wildlife habitat, pocosin forests are carbon sinks − capturing and storing carbon dioxide from decomposing organic material that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change.

Map of forest areas purchased by Apple in 2015.

More:Power of peat: Why environmentalists are pushing to restore NC's pocosin wetlands

Seven years and eight versions of the iPhone later, with the latest iPhone 14 released this month, what's the status of the forest tracts?

Work in progress

The Conservation Fund spokesperson Val Keefer said "there's not much happening right now" while the environmental group owns the land, during what she stated last week via email was an "interim ownership" window.

She added that the site, which the fund calls "Brunswick Forest," is being managed under the "Sustainable Forestry Initiative." That work has included planting 185,000 trees across 300 acres, including 40 acres of native longleaf pine and Atlantic white cedar that provides a home for the rare Hessel's hairstreak butterfly.

More:King of the reefs: Will climate change help the invasive lionfish expand north of NC?

"Once the project is complete, the Brunswick Forest will connect to the 17,000-acre Green Swamp Preserve, improving biodiversity and connectivity for wildlife in the area," Keefer wrote. That preserve is managed by The Nature Conservancy.

According to The Conservation Fund, the Brunswick site includes 629 acres of wetlands and 9 miles of streams. Besides the Hessel's hairstreak butterfly, the site is home to Venus' flytraps and other threatened carnivorous plants along with providing habitat for a range of other rare birds and animals, according to a natural resource assessment commissioned by the fund.

Apple teamed up with The Conservation Fund to buy nearly 3,600 acres of forestland in Brunswick County in 2015.

As was first announced when the forest was purchased and hinted at by Keefer, The Virginia-based environmental group intends to turn the site over to a third party for long-term management.  The land is already protected by a conservation easement, guaranteeing it will remain a forest.

Natural partners would seem to be The Nature Conservancy, which manages the neighboring Green Swamp Preserve, and the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, which often takes over lands purchased or donated by environmental groups like The Nature Conservancy and N.C. Coastal Land Trust.

Officials for both organizations said they couldn't recall any recent conversations with the fund or Apple, and a request for comment from Apple about the Brunswick forest site wasn't returned.

Keefer said The Conservation Fund hoped to "have some more info/activity to share with you in a few months."

Recycling and ditching the plastic

In its 2022 environmental progress report, Apple reiterated its commitment to use responsibly sourced wood fiber in its packaging and increase the global supply of those responsible materials.

"Through partnerships with The Conservation Fund and World Wildlife Fund, we’ve protected and improved more than 1 million acres of working forests in the U.S. and China," states the report. "In fiscal year 2021, these forests generated enough responsibly sourced fiber to balance all the fiber used in our packaging."

The Hessel's hairstreak butterfly, here seen spotted in Florida in 2019, is just one of the rare animals that inhabits areas in and around the Green Swamp in Brunswick County.

The report also states that in fiscal year 2021 the company used 257,000 metric tons of packaging. Of that amount, 63% came from recycled fiber; 33% from responsibly sourced virgin fiber (like the Brunswick and Maine forests); and 4% was plastic.

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work.