Mano Bank becomes a sponsor of the Ancient Woods Foundation

Mano Bank has set sustainability as its performance priority and thus, it has become a sponsor of the Ancient Woods Foundation, having signed an annual sponsorship agreement. The foundation will use the donation to buy off the biologically valuable mature forest in order to protect it against clearance or other negative human activities.

According to Mr Mindaugas Survila, co-founder of PI Ancient Woods Foundation, the purpose of the fund is to restore and protect ancient woods in Lithuania and to educate society about biological, ecological, and social value of the forests, and to preserve the naturally developing areas of woods.

The foundation’s founder tells that residents of woods are disappearing together with the woods, as their interdependency is very strong.

“People sometimes try to “help” woods without having sufficient knowledge and they result in causing irreparable damage to nature. Destruction of the forest ecosystem and an uninterruptible life chain led to hundreds of biologically varieties vanishing from the Lithuanian forests – plants, mushrooms, animals, birds, insects and other flora, – says M. Survila. – Our foundation believes that all the biological organisms in the forest are equal and neither of them could be called a pest. We want to preserve as many Lithuanian ancient woods and their biological diversity as possible.“

Aspiration to contribute to protection of natural forests and their bio diversity

The managers of Mano Bank regard the decision to support the Ancient Woods Foundation as their aim to contribute actually to preservation of the Lithuanian forests and their biological diversity, to help forest areas to become real ancient woods, and to strengthen the society’s understanding about importance of sustainability.

“Sustainability is among the priorities and essential values of our work. While cooperating with “Invest EU“, we sponsor the companies implementing sustainability projects, – says Mrs Giedrė Blazgienė, CEO of Mano Bank. – Besides, we are the first among the specialised banks in Lithuania to start assessing sustainability of the companies before granting them loans. That is how we attempt to accelerate transmission of the Lithuanian business and society to more sustainable activities.”

According to the bank’s CEO, the decision to sponsor the Ancient Woods Foundation was also affected by the fact that this foundation gives big attention to education of society. The documentary “Ancient Woods” created by M. Survila in 2018 affected not only the Lithuanian spectators, but also those from abroad, which, according to M. Survila, encouraged to pay more attention to preservation of primordial woods and to establish a separate foundation for this purpose.

According to the foundation’s manager, the reserves in Lithuania are the only territories, where forests have a probability to become ancient woods. They amount only to 1.225 percent of the Lithuanian forests, whereas only 0.0009 percent of the country’s area is attributed to the old forests, the age of which exceeds 200 years. There are only fragments left of such forests. Due to rapidly cut forests, the number of mature forests and unspoilt ecosystems is decreasing in Lithuania, thus many species of animals, plants and under threat of extinction. The diversity of such species in need of constant and slowly changing conditions may be preserved only in mature forests.

The lack of dead wood causes the biggest threat to extinction of 80 percent of protected species of insects in Lithuania. The mushrooms that are disintegrating such wood are also under threat of extinction. Other links of forest ecosystem depend on them. They enable the uninterruptible life circuit, home and food to everyone.

The non-governmental organisation Ancient Woods Foundations was established in January 2020. Today, it takes care about 84 ha of forests – future ancient woods. The biggest integral land protected by the foundation was bought one month ago and is located in Raigardas valley. The foundation’s team selects the woods that need to be preserved carefully, according to more than 50 scientific criteria. The growing support of the foundation’s community helps to continue its main activities – to protect forests and to educate society.