When you’re worth more than $22 billion, as Alibaba founder Jack Ma is, you can most definitely afford a 28,100-acre property in New York’s Adirondacks complete with a trout fishery, woodlands, and a maple-syrup operation.
Ma shelled out $23 million for the upstate New York estate known as Brandon Park, and has plans to turn it into a conservation area and the “occasional personal retreat,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
The estate includes nine miles of the St Regis River and an array of lakes, ponds, and forests. The Adirondack Almanac looked into the purchase and found the spread-out property includes a 2,200-foot mountain, around 40 miles of roads, and some 20 homes, cabins, and built-up structures.
A non-profit entity will be formed to manage Brandon Park, and it will mark Ma’s first purchase of conservation land outside China, Ma’s spokesman Jim Wilkinson told the Journal. Ma has been leading conservation efforts in China as chairman of the China board of the Nature Conservancy, a global conservation organization. He played a big part in putting together the Laohegou Nature Reserve in Sichuan, the first nature reserve in China managed by a non-governmental organization, according to the Nature Conservancy.
The e-commerce giant he founded, Alibaba (BABA), has also followed in Ma’s footsteps, funneling 0.3% of its estimated annual revenue of $12.2 billion into environmental protection, with an emphasis on water and air quality improvement projects.
“The Chinese people really care about environmental protection in China. That will be their greatest contribution to the world,” said Ma in a previous interview.