Whether it is out of sincere concern for our environment, a cynical attempt to improve its corporate image or just the guilty pleasure of watching their do-gooder detractors caught in a deep moral quandary, the folks who spend Wal-Mart's money are giving $35 million in petty cash over the next decade to various wild land preservation projects around the nation.

One of the first efforts to benefit from the Home of Always Low Prices will be the one to buy nearly 900,000 acres of land and grazing rights between the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the Utah border.

The project, which the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund have been raising money for since last July, will go ahead now that Wal-Mart, working through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, has ponied up $1 million toward the $4.5 million price tag.

We have long been in favor of the market-based approach to conservation. Even though the federal government has, and has defaulted on, its responsibility to preserve millions of acres of beautiful wild lands, the process of non-government groups or individuals buying land or land use rights in order to preserve its natural characteristics is a welcome and growing trend.

Not everybody likes the approach of the Grand Canyon Trust, Conservation Fund and other organizations that are willing buyers in search of willing sellers. To some, it's too slow. To others, it is too elitist.

To us, it just works. No condemnation or seizure. No long legal battles. Sometimes land used for grazing or farming is not removed from production, just managed in a much more environmentally friendly way by folks who have priorities beyond mere profit.

The coming of Wal-Mart - a corporation roundly to be hated in some circles for, among other things, turning vast swaths of ex-urban greenbelt into acres of concrete - is sure to give some people pause. The same people who wouldn't shop at Wal-Mart if it were the last store on earth will see some of that earth preserved by a fund that, the company says, is designed to preserve one acre of wild land for every acre Wal-Mart stores consume.

One could argue that a better use of Wal-Mart's vast wealth would be to pay its suppliers and its employees enough money to survive on. But, given the huge need for money to preserve land while justly compensating owners, we beggars cannot be too choosy.