Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / New fund hopes to save 100 of the world's most threatened species

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New fund hopes to save 100 of the world's most threatened species · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: Well, the new fund is working to save a hundred
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  Speaker 1: of the world's most threatened species. The Phoenix Species Project
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  Speaker 1: will put two hundred million dollars towards restoring animals in
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  Speaker 1: the wild and stopping them from going extinct. It's one
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  Speaker 1: of the largest funds ever focused on species recovery. The
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  Speaker 1: project is a collaboration between the Bezos Earth Fund and Rewild,
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  Speaker 1: a nonprofit co founded by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and All Comms.
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  Speaker 1: At a time when conservationists have warned about a decline
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  Speaker 1: in global biodiversity in just a few weeks after the
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  Speaker 1: Trump administration rolled back in endangered species protections. On that
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  Speaker 1: list of plants and animals the fund will focus on
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  Speaker 1: are the golden crowns offoca that's an animal found in
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  Speaker 1: Madagascar that travels through trees, leaping from trunk to trunk.
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  Speaker 1: And the hickory nut gorge green salamander that's an amphibian
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  Speaker 1: you see it here. Found in the mountains of western
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  Speaker 1: North Carolina. It spends most of its life in trees,
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  Speaker 1: on cliff faces and on boulders. I spoke to Barney Long,
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  Speaker 1: he's Rewild Senior director of Conservation and jus you told
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  Speaker 1: me how they put this list of one hundred species together.
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  Speaker 2: We put the list together by looking at all of
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  Speaker 2: the globally critically endangered species that are on the IUCN
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  Speaker 2: Red List. We then identified thirty countries that have the
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  Speaker 2: most critically endangered species, and from there we started to
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  Speaker 2: look at what was the diversity of species across the world,
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  Speaker 2: looking at the different habitats, the different threats that species
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  Speaker 2: could face, and pulled together a representative sample of species
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  Speaker 2: that covers all of those different ideas so that we
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  Speaker 2: could pull together a list that was really representative of
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  Speaker 2: species across the world.
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  Speaker 1: Just to take one animal from this list, the Golden
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  Speaker 1: Crown shavaka, you know what has led to it being endangered,
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  Speaker 1: and you know exactly how do you think that this
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  Speaker 1: project and this funding will work to protect it?
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  Speaker 2: The Golden Crown. Sofarka is a lema from Madagascar. It's
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  Speaker 2: found in a very small area and in small forest fragments,
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  Speaker 2: and it's threatened by forest fires and habitat destruction as
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  Speaker 2: well as poaching. And so the project that our local
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  Speaker 2: partners have pulled together is addressing all of those threats
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  Speaker 2: so that the species can not only be saved from extinction,
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  Speaker 2: but put on the road to recovery.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, when it comes to putting a species on the
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  Speaker 1: road to recovery, what are some of the biggest challenges
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  Speaker 1: that you'll be facing.
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  Speaker 2: Putting species on the road to recovery is very challenging,
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  Speaker 2: but it's also not a cookie cutter, one size fits all.
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  Speaker 2: Species from across the world face very different threats and
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  Speaker 2: also very different opportunities. So every single species needs its
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  Speaker 2: own plan, its own strategy, its own set of local
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  Speaker 2: stakeholders that can put together as a team. It's very challenging,
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  Speaker 2: but we do believe with the right duration of funding
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  Speaker 2: and the right level of funding so that projects can
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  Speaker 2: really focus on recovery, every species stands a chance of recovery.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And this effort is going to be collaborating with
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  Speaker 1: indigenous people's local communities as well. Why did those kinds
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  Speaker 1: of partnerships help When it comes to protecting or restoring
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  Speaker 1: endangered species.
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  Speaker 2: The best steward of land and wildlife are always the
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  Speaker 2: local people that live alongside them, whether that's indigenous communities,
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  Speaker 2: local communities, local governments, etc. And so we at REWILD
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  Speaker 2: work very closely hand in hand to support those groups
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  Speaker 2: so that they can do more impactful conservation.
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  Speaker 1: This is a two hundred million dollar commitment. Obviously a
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  Speaker 1: lot of money, but how successful do you think any
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  Speaker 1: kind of preservation effort can be right now in the
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  Speaker 1: face of climate change and really in the face of
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  Speaker 1: what you've been witnessing recently these climate linked disasters, massive
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  Speaker 1: forest fires or ocean temperature warming. You know, you focus
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  Speaker 1: on a few different species, but is there a broader
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  Speaker 1: picture here that makes this even more challenger.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the planet is facing a crisis right now, and
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  Speaker 2: we need to deal with some very large systemic threats
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  Speaker 2: to biodiversity and to functioning ecosystems and a healthy planet.
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  Speaker 2: But functioning ecosystems and a healthy planet is fundamentally made
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  Speaker 2: up of individual species, and so we need to focus
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  Speaker 2: on that lowest common denominator as well as these larger processes,
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  Speaker 2: and so it's critical that we don't lose individual species
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  Speaker 2: and start breaking that web of life. And in fact,
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  Speaker 2: if we really put the right resources and effort in,
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  Speaker 2: we know we can actually recover those species and therefore
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  Speaker 2: help to rebuild that web of life. Conservation works. We
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  Speaker 2: know it works. There's multiple examples across the world that
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  Speaker 2: species can or recover. The key issue is how do
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  Speaker 2: we focus on that and how do we scale up
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  Speaker 2: so that all critically endangered and endangered species have that
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  Speaker 2: opportunity to recover.