Pooling Resources
Amgen and its employees tackle urban conservation projects
In 2013, volunteers from Amgen facilities across the U.S. are came together with their neighbors to dig in, clean up, plant and improve urban spaces for people and wildlife. In collaboration with NFWF, the Amgen Foundation is supporting clean water projects in or near cities where the company operates, and local Amgen employees have stepped up to lend a hand.
Beginning in 2012, Amgen Foundation and NFWF joined in a nationwide effort to support community-based wetland, riparian, and coastal habitat restoration in seven areas where Amgen has facilities. Amplifying the effort are Amgen employees, who participate in on-the-ground restoration actions.
In Providence, Rhode Island, an event at Roger Williams Park removed trash, planted more than 1,000 shrubs and created two new rain gardens in the heart of the city. Volunteers from Amgen's manufacturing facility in West Greenwich and their families joined other activists, the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, the Environmental Protection Agency and Save The Bay to collect debris and plant the rain gardens with native grasses and wetland plants.
The rain gardens will act as natural filters, purifying polluted runoff from paved areas before it enters ponds that flow into the Pawtuxet River. That helps improve the water quality in the river and Narragansett Bay. Because water is an important resource for the biotechnology company, Amgen Foundation supports efforts that cultivate healthy waterways in communities where the firm operates.
“The great showing of volunteers from both Amgen and the community and the extra effort that everyone put in made a difference,” said Wenley Ferguson, Restoration Coordinator at Save The Bay in Narragansett, Rhode Island.
In Seattle, local Amgen volunteers assisted with a restoration project at Madrona Woods, a nine-acre urban forest that borders the western shore of Lake Washington. Working with a youth group and other community members, the crew added 1,850 plants along streambanks. Wild residents of the woods, which range from bald eagles to hummingbirds and salamanders, will be among the beneficiaries of the effort.
In another event in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, Amgen employees helped remove more than 1,300 pounds of trash from a local beach. Additional Amgen events helped restore natural areas and improve water quality in Denver, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Learn more about Amgen’s commitment to the environment and get details about the work of the Amgen Foundation.
Watch a video of the Roger Williams Park project in Providence.