Former Facebook president, Napster co-founder, and Silicon Valley “bad boy” Sean Parker has been assigned a very unique punishment as part of his community service for his environmentally unsound and lavish $10 million nuptials at Big Sur last year. He has to create a beach-mapping app for the California Coastal Commission as part of his settlement for building wedding props on land that encroached upon potentially-sensitive redwood forest.
“It was a creative resolution… that will ultimately benefit public access. We’re now working with his technical team, which is orders of magnitude beyond what we would be able to summon in terms of technical expertise within our agency,” said Sarah Christie, a spokeswoman for the commission, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In addition to paying $2.5 million to eight different conservation programs, the California Coastal Commission — the agency that took Parker and his wife to court — told Parker that he must create a beach-mapping app for them in order to help beach-goers navigate their way around private property that sits on the often tricky routes of California’s public coastline, the Chronicle notes. California’s coastline is public.
$1.4 million of the money Parker and his wife, Alexandra Lenas, will pay to the conservation programs includes $345,000 for the San Francisco-based Save the Redwoods League to rebuild a section of the Big Sur’s Pfeiffer Falls Trail. The popular trail was badly damaged by a 2008 wildfire.
In a written statement this week, Parker said that he and his wife Alexandra were “proud” to pay the settlement money that would benefit the coast, the Chronicle writes. “Two people do not go to enormous lengths to get married in a redwood grove only to run roughshod over it. They do so out of respect, because they love the redwood forest, feel a connection to the forest, and want to share that with their friends and family,” he said last year.
Parker told the Chronicle that despite having gone out of his way to seek advice from conservationists and the property owner about how to minimize his impact on the land, he was incorrectly told that he did not need permits. The remainder of the $2.5 million settlement will be used to cover fines against the Ventana Inn and Spa where Parker’s wedding was held.
The Internet mogul received several death threats last year from eco-terrorists as a result of his “Lord of the Rings” inspired Big Sur wedding “There are crazy people on Facebook typing death threats,” Parker said. “There were people — eco-terrorists — on my own Facebook page saying, ‘Let’s find this guy and put him out of his misery’… Psychopaths are hunting me.”
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