In the largest gift ever to a single environmental group, the foundation created by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore announced yesterday that it would give Conservation International $261 million over 10 years. The money will help the Washington, D.C.-based group identify and protect biodiversity hotspots, areas that CI says cover 1.4 percent of the Earth’s land mass but contain 60 percent of the planet’s terrestrial species. The group’s president, Russell Mittermeier, said he hoped to use Moore’s gift to leverage as much as $6 billion from private and public sources. In 1998, Moore gave $35 million to CI to help establish the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science.
