We protect mountain landscapes by investing in the people, communities and livelihoods that sustain them.
On August 26, a glacial collapse sent a flood down the Trishuli River through Rasuwa and Nuwakot. Homes, farmland, roads and critical infrastructure were damaged or destroyed.
For us, this isn’t a distant disaster. Our partners are there. The farming families are there. The schools and communities we know are there.
The Nepal Flood Recovery Fund is supporting immediate relief and rebuilding through people who were in the valley long before the flood and will remain long after it.
They hold the headwaters that supply much of the world’s fresh water. Forests that shelter extraordinary biodiversity. Cultures shaped over generations. And communities whose lives are inseparable from the landscapes around them.
Yet mountain regions remain among the world’s most vulnerable, and least supported, ecosystems.
We believe protecting them requires looking at the whole mountain. The land. The water. The wildlife. And the people who call it home.
To preserve the world’s great mountain ranges and to strengthen the communities who call them home. We fund the permanent protection of high-mountain forests, watersheds, and wildlife corridors. We build and equip schools and health clinics in remote mountain villages, and we invest in safe, dignified livelihoods that keep forests standing and families together.
A world where every great mountain range is preserved by the people who live beneath it; where standing forests, thriving villages, open wildlife corridors, and safe childhoods are one and the same achievement.
In 2007, while Tashi Wangchuk Tenzing, grandson of Tenzing Norgay, was summiting Everest for the third time, his wife Bandi Nima Sherpa Tenzing stood above the terraced hills of Nuwakot district and saw something beyond the landscape: a community where human trafficking and emigration were draining families from the mountains.
She decided to change the economics. She believed the mountains could only be protected if families could prosper without leaving them. The Tenzings planted coffee. From that decision grew a farm that supports hundreds of families, and a nonprofit that builds schools, equips clinics, sponsors children, and runs anti-trafficking programs across the Himalaya.
The coffee is the product. The protection is the purpose. The Foundation exists to carry that purpose to every great range.
Our work brings together five things that are too often addressed separately.
Protect forests, watersheds, wildlife habitat and the landscapes that connect them: high-mountain forests that are home to red pandas, Himalayan black bears, and hundreds of bird species.
Income rooted in a standing forest: coffee, forest products and eco-tourism that give young people a reason to stay.
Building, equipping, and sustaining schools in remote mountain villages, with teacher support for children who would otherwise have no access.
Rural health clinics serving mountain populations far from the nearest hospital, where geography makes access difficult.
Anti-trafficking programs, child sponsorship, and women’s leadership through coffee cooperatives, so families can build a future at home.
Because when a village can thrive, families can stay. When families can stay, local knowledge remains. And when communities have a stake in protecting the land around them, preservation has a chance to last.
Nuwa Estate, the Nepal Green Tara Foundation and local partners were building schools, supporting clinics and creating livelihoods in Nepal long before the foundation existed.
Mountain Preservation Foundation was created to stand behind that work, help it grow, and build a preservation model capable of reaching mountain communities far beyond Nepal.
The figures below are our partners’ record to date, as reported to us. We will share our own results as our grants are made.
The challenges facing mountain communities are global. From the Himalaya to Africa, the Andes, the Rockies and other great ranges, environmental pressure and economic pressure are often part of the same story.
We are building an approach designed to travel, but never to be imposed. Every place is different. Every community knows its mountain better than we ever will. So wherever we go, the principle remains the same:
Work locally. Build long relationships. Protect the mountain.
What follows is a roadmap of planned phases, not commitments made, and it will change as we learn.
Mountain Preservation Foundation was designed so that philanthropy can remain focused on the work.
Planet 5 has committed a portion of revenue from its Guardian Program to help support the Foundation’s operating costs. That commitment is made under a written agreement, and our commercial and philanthropic activities remain separate, with independent governance and accounting. The Guardian Program is a Planet 5 product; you can read about it on planet5media.com.
Donors to the Foundation are giving to the Foundation alone. Gifts carry no goods, services, or membership benefits. Designated gifts, such as the Nepal Flood Recovery Fund, are reserved for the designated program.
The purpose is simple: keep more philanthropic capital where it belongs, in the mountains.
Good intentions aren’t enough. We are building our work around clear goals and measurable outcomes.
The Foundation was incorporated in Wyoming on August 24, 2026. Our first program is the Nepal Flood Recovery Fund. As grants are made, we intend to share what they funded and what changed because of them: habitat protected, livelihoods supported, and schools and health programs strengthened.
Mountain Preservation Foundation is a Wyoming nonprofit corporation, EIN 42-4666179, with a registered office at 30 N Gould St, Ste R, Sheridan, WY 82801. Questions about governance or a gift: give@mountainpreservation.org.
A forest protected. A livelihood created. A child who can remain in school. A family able to build a future without leaving home. A community with the resources to protect the mountain it has lived beneath for generations.
This is what preservation can look like. And we’re just beginning.
Gifts carry no goods, services, or membership benefits, and we never sell or share donor information.