 In October 2018 Wyss published an article in the New York Times stating that he was contributing 1 billion dollars to environmental causes.Wyss has stated that he became passionate about the American West and land preservation after visiting the U.S. in 1958 as a student and taking a summer job as a surveyor with the Colorado Highway Department.In 1998, he created the Wyss Foundation to establish and sponsor informal partnerships between non-governmental organizations and the United States government to place large swathes of land under permanent protection in the American West.