re:wilding the world
Life on Earth, in all its myriad forms of wildlife and ecosystems, is what sustains us. It is our first line of defense against emerging diseases and climate chaos, and ensures access to clean air, water, and an abundance of food and medicines. In short, healthy people need a healthy planet. Protecting and restoring the fabric of life in our only home is at the heart of everything we do.
Our work and impact is cross-cutting across three focal areas:
wildlands
Protecting and rewilding our planet’s irreplaceable places.
wildlife
Reversing extinction and restoring the world’s rarest, most threatened species.
guardians
Partnering with Earth advocates the world over.
Our approach
We work shoulder-to-shoulder with both funders and our partners on the ground. Our core donors support our operating costs, so that 100% of all public donations are channeled directly to our programs across the world.
Radical change requires radical collaborations. Everything we do is in partnership with individuals, Indigenous peoples, communities, organizations, governments, and companies.
Our collaborative approach enables us to scale impact through the replication and amplification of proven solutions, and to act quickly where need meets opportunity.
We focus on solutions — such as creating and managing protected areas, protecting and restoring ecosystems, working with Indigenous people on their land rights, and preventing wildlife crime — that are tailored to local ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts and implemented by our local partners.
Global Partnerships
We maximize efficiency and scale through strategic partnerships that leverage resources and prioritize and align actions for global impact.
Local Partnerships
We do not have offices in the places we work, but support partners, individuals, and communities on the ground. We work with more than 200 partners in over 50 countries, developing and replicating best practices that can be tailored and implemented locally. We believe that the best people to protect the local environment are the leaders who live there. Here are a few examples of our work:
Action Funds
We collaborate on grantmaking targeted to specific solutions. Our action fund portfolio includes:
Where we work
Even though all biodiversity is important, and all nations should do everything possible to maintain the full range of species and ecosystems occurring within their borders, biodiversity is by no means evenly distributed across the globe. We work to protect and restore those places of utmost importance to the overall health of the planet and the persistence of biodiversity. Those places that, if lost, would result in a series of major extinctions that would reverberate globally.
These places are called Biodiversity Hotspots, High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas and the Key Biodiversity Areas within them.
Biodiversity Hotspots are biogeographic regions holding exceptional concentrations of endemic species that are severely threatened. Thirty-six terrestrial hotspots have been recognized, covering 16.7% of Earth’s land surface. What remains of the natural vegetation in these 36 hotspots, however, is down to 2.39% of the world’s land area, an area a little larger than India. Scientists estimate that half of all plant and vertebrate species are found only within the hotspots.
High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas (HBWAs) offer a proactive rather than reactive approach to prioritization. HBWAs are greater than 1 million hectares in area, and retain an extraordinary wealth of biodiversity. These areas are at least 70%, and up to 90%, intact.
Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity, delineated at a finer scale than both Biodiversity Hotspots and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas. As founding partners of the KBA Partnership, we aim to ensure that all 16,000 KBAs, especially the 8,000 within Biodiversity Hotspots and High Biodiversity Wilderness Areas, are effectively safeguarded and restored through collaborations.
Our Impact
180+ million acres actively conserved
47 conservation areas created
100 threatened species actively conserved
16,000+ species benefitting
400+ partners in 88 countries
For all wildkind
We all have a role to play in protecting and restoring the species and ecosystems, as citizens, decision-makers, institutions and private companies. Our collective actions and habits drive systemic and lasting change.
Achieving our vision of a world in which thriving wildlife and ecosystems underpin our own wellbeing and prosperity will require not just rewilding species and places, but also rewilding hearts and minds.
By inspiring creative collaborations and action among stakeholders for the future of our planet, and providing toolkits for action and a platform for engagement and community-building around natural solutions, we are building enabling conditions for individual people and organizations worldwide to adopt in their daily lives a philosophy of rewilding our shared home, together.
Join us.
Banner collage image credits: Eladio Fernandez, New Zealand Department of Conservation, Aussie Ark, Robin Moore