The World Wildlife Fund

by Rory Vogel

[Posted at Wikimedia Commons]

I support a number of charities, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Amnesty
International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Greenpeace. Founded in
Switzerland in 1961, WWF headquarters are still located in that country.

From its inception, WWF’s strategy has focused on purchasing land in countries
around the world where populations of animals are threatened or endangered. In its
early years, WWF accomplished this through fundraising and dispersing grant
money to already established non-governmental organizations. Later, WWF
expanded its mission to include protecting biodiversity, promoting sustainable
resource use, and solving climate-related problems. WWF also began managing its
own conservation projects instead of relying on nonprofit organizational partners to
oversee them. Today, WWF stands as the world's largest non-governmental
conservation organization, with five million supporters and 1,300 projects ongoing
in some 90 countries.

WWF’s 2020 goal focuses on the conservation of 19 natural regions worldwide,

including the Amur-Heilong river basin spanning China and Russia. This region is
home to the world's largest feline, the Amur tiger, and the world's rarest feline, the
Amur leopard. Saving their habitat is high priority, as the WWF estimates that only
3,000 tigers still exist in the wild. Another area of focus is Borneo and Sumatra,
where threatened rain forests host a diverse population of elephants, tigers, rhinos,
orangutans, and gibbons. Other critical areas include the Amazon, the Mekong
Delta, the Arctic, the Coral Triangle, Namibia, and the northern Great Plains

Beyond land purchase and management, WWF puts its scientific and economic
analysis to use influencing global markets so they place a premium on protecting
the environment. Its international finance initiatives strive to educate banks and
development institutions on the profound environmental and social consequences of
their actions. WWF also works with companies and institutions themselves in
lessening ecological footprints when they engage in energy- and water-intensive
activities.

There are many ways of becoming involved in WWF. One is through adopting a
species, which symbolically links donors to certain animals the organization
protects. WWF also maintains an extensive network of volunteer interns, whose
efforts span the globe. Interns are often undergraduate and graduate students,
whose university specialties complement WWF's mission. For more details, visit the
World Wildlife Fund online at www.worldwildlife.org.