2023
Funding a Paid Internship
Current Problems is a grassroots environmental nonprofit that conducts trash cleanups across the river systems of north central Florida. Since their founding in 1993, Current Problems and their volunteers have removed over one million pounds of waste.
Wild Green Future provided a second grant to support their environmental education internship for the 2023 season.
Learn more about Current Problems on their website, linked here.
Staffing Conservation in the Amazon
Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon (ASA)'s mission is to conserve the biodiversity and natural resources of the Peruvian Amazon for the benefit of all those who live in and depend on the rainforest. Based in Madre de Dios, they work by combining research and education with community-based conservation, acting as a resource to their neighbors across the region.
Good work takes people power. Wild Green Future provided a grant to support ASA's Lepidoptera Project Manager, Lepidoptera Project Lead Assistant, and Lead Resident Naturalist positions.
Learn more about the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon on their website, linked here.
Expanding Conservation Infrastructure
Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon (ASA)'s mission is to conserve the biodiversity and natural resources of the Peruvian Amazon for the benefit of all those who live in and depend on the rainforest. Based in Madre de Dios, they work by combining research and education with community-based conservation, acting as a resource to their neighbors across the region.
ASA's field station, Finca las Piedras, required infrastructural expansions to support greater conservation and research efforts. Wild Green Future provided a grant to further expand the flush toilet and waste disposal system begun in 2022. This enabled the station to support more students and personnel.
It can be easier to fundraise for certain tasks, like planting trees and conserving charismatic animals, but organizations are often more limited by less exciting factors. Despite their crucial role, these everyday concerns can be much more difficult to find funding for. This mismatch provides Wild Green Future with an opportunity: by funding infrastructure costs, we are able to help expand our partners' operational capacity, leading to much more benefit per dollar spent than might otherwise be obtainable.
Learn more about Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon on their website, linked here.
2022
Increasing Organizational Capacity with an Americorps Internship
The Palouse Prairie is only found in north central Idaho, and, with less than 1% of its original habitat remaining, it is among the most endangered ecosystems in the continental United States. With a team of 4, Palouse Land Trust maintains connectivity and relationships with landowners across a 12 million acre region. They have been able to secure hundreds of acres of this prairie type and has contributed to the protection of several threatened species such as the Spalding’s catchfly (Silene spaldingii) and giant Palouse earthworm (Driloleirus americanus).
In 2022, Wild Green Future provided funding for Palouse Land Trust to hire a paid Americorps intern. In addition to creating a great opportunity to an early-career natural resources professional, this reduced land management demands on existing staff and allowed them to devote more time to assisting interested landowners in placing their properties under conservation easement.
Learn more about Palouse Land Trust on their website, linked here.
Cleanup Supplies
Current Problems is a grassroots environmental nonprofit that conducts trash cleanups across the river systems of north central Florida. Since their founding in 1993, Current Problems and their volunteers have removed over one million pounds of waste.
Wild Green Future provided a grant to help provide cleanup supplies to Current Problems's volunteers.
Learn more about Current Problems on their website, linked here.
Sustaining the Brazil Nut Corridor
Most of the world's Brazil nut supply comes from Madre de Dios, where a belt of designated concessions are stewarded by harvesters known as concessionaires. Brazil nut trees’ life cycle requires intact tropical rainforest, so as long as the harvest is sufficient these concessions will continue to support a wildlife corridor the size of Connecticut.
Our partner, Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon, works to assist Brazil nut concessionaires in maintaining the productivity of their forests by holding workshops on Brazil nut cultivation and raising seedlings to be planted in forest gaps.
Sustained funding is vital for the success of conservation projects. Wild Green Future was proud to fund this work for a second year.
Funding a Paid Internship
Current Problems is a grassroots environmental nonprofit that conducts trash cleanups across the river systems of north central Florida. Since their founding in 1993, Current Problems and their volunteers have removed over one million pounds of waste.
Wild Green Future provided a grant to support their environmental education internship for the 2022 season.
Learn more about Current Problems on their website, linked here.
Expanding Conservation Infrastructure
Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon (ASA)'s mission is to conserve the biodiversity and natural resources of the Peruvian Amazon for the benefit of all those who live in and depend on the rainforest. Based in Madre de Dios, they work by combining research and education with community-based conservation, acting as a resource to their neighbors across the region.
ASA's field station, Finca las Piedras, required infrastructural expansions to support greater conservation and research efforts. Wild Green Future provided a grant to support the construction of flush toilets, a corresponding waste disposal system, and the installation of larger solar panels. This enabled the station to support more students, personnel, and scientific equipment.
It can be easier to fundraise for certain tasks, like planting trees and conserving charismatic animals, but organizations are often more limited by less exciting factors. Despite their crucial role, these everyday concerns can be much more difficult to find funding for. This mismatch provides Wild Green Future with an opportunity: by funding infrastructure costs, we are able to help expand our partners' operational capacity, leading to much more benefit per dollar spent than might otherwise be obtainable.
Learn more about the Alliance for a Sustainable Amazon on their website, linked here.
2021
Mapping Uncharted Roads
Unofficial road systems are rapidly expanding into rainforest regions across the island of Borneo, opening new areas of the island to logging and large-scale agriculture. The success of conservation efforts in the region rely heavily on knowing where these roads are, and accurately predicting where they will be built next.
The Global Roadmap Program at James Cook University is working to create accurate maps of the region using satellite imagery. The process requires human input to accurately detect and catalogue the new roads. To map the world's third largest island, it requires a lot more time spent documenting uncharted routes than any single researcher could devote to the task, so the Wild Green community stepped up to help by tracing the new roads on Google Earth.
Thanks to the Wild Green Community's generosity in volunteering their time and effort, we were able to contribute an additional area of approximately 51,100 square kilometers to Global Roadmap's Borneo map. Results from the project, including the areas mapped by Wild Green Memes participants, have been published in Nature.
This data informs conservation efforts by allowing for the creation of better models to predict which areas are most vulnerable to further road expansion. Such models are vital to conservation planning because poorly placed new roads are among the largest contributors to habitat degradation. A greater understanding of where they might be constructed in the future can help avoid human-nature conflicts by allowing governments and local communities to direct road expansion and upgrades to areas where they will be most beneficial to people and least detrimental to wildlife and natural resources.
In addition to providing a literal roadmap for conservation planning, Global Roadmap and Wild Green Future made a donation for conservation in the region, which was sent to The Orangutan Project, an organization doing inspiring work to ensure the sustainability of rainforests and orangutan populations on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
Giving Sea Turtles a Boost
In 2021, the cold snap in Texas caused a major sea turtle stunning event. The staff and volunteers of Sea Turtle Inc. took in thousands of cold-stunned turtles for treatment, working heroically to rescue and care for them amidst power outages to their facilities.
The generous donations from the Wild Green Community during 2020’s conservation fundraiser allowed Wild Green Future to provide an emergency grant of $1,000 to Sea Turtle Inc. to help them with their efforts.