World Wildlife Fund

First official poster of WWF from 1961. This poster was so designed that it could be easily produced with the wording in any language.
© WWF-Canon / WWF Intl.

In 1960, the renowned biologist Sir Julian Huxley returned from a research trip to Africa deeply shaken by what he had seen: runaway habitat destruction and uncontrolled hunting of endangered species that, unchecked, would drive many of them into extinction within a matter of years. Huxley shared his concerns with fellow scientists and other prominent personalities, who agreed that the challenge of saving the natural world required something that, up until then, had never existed: an international organization with the scientific, technical and financial resources to fund and conduct conservation efforts around the globe. The following year, World Wildlife Fund was created, with Huxley and Sir Peter Scott, the noted ornithologist and artist who created the panda logo, among its founding members.

Over the following four decades, World Wildlife Fund has grown into the largest privately financed international conservation organization in the world, with national affiliates in more than 30 countries and a global membership of more than five million-with nearly 1.2 million in the U.S. alone. WWF field staff work on projects in more than 100 countries, backed by teams of scientists and policy experts in national offices around the world.

Our core mission remains the protection of endangered species and their habitats. But over the years, as environmental threats have multiplied and become more complex, the scope of this mission has expanded beyond field work to include policy engagement, education, advocacy and pioneering work in conservation science and finance. Giving people the incentive to work for conservation by finding conservation solutions that work for them is one of the hallmarks of this expanded effort, which seeks to reconcile human-wildlife conflicts, preserve biodiversity and nurture a healthy, living planet.

Public meeting at The Royal Society of Arts in London, 1961. The speaker is Sir Julian Huxley.
© WWF-Canon / WWF Intl.

A solid grounding in science, along with the global scope of our projects, strong policy expertise in conservation-related fields such as trade and sustainable development, and a results-oriented approach to everything we do has enabled WWF to make many contributions to conservation over the years.

Among our major accomplishments:

• WWF invented and pioneered the use of the debt-for-nature swap and the conservation trust fund, the two most important financial mechanisms in conservation today.
• WWF was the driving force behind the international ban on ivory trading in 1990 and also helped to secure the international moratorium on commercial whaling.
• WWF has helped to create more than 500 parks and protected areas in Africa, Latin America and Asia and, in the past decade alone, has secured commitments to protect more than 1 billion acres of forest habitat around the world.

WWF first proposed the idea of the debt-for-nature swap in 1984 and arranged the first successful one three years later in Ecuador. We also established the developing world's first conservation trust fund in 1991 in Bhutan. Over the past two decades, debt swaps and conservation trusts have leveraged more than $1 billion for conservation around the world, $200 million of it through the direct involvement of WWF.

WWF was the first conservation organization to work in China, where we have partnered with the Chinese government on panda conservation since 1979. We also play a leading role in the conservation of other endangered species such as tigers, rhinos and elephants. TRAFFIC, the investigative arm of WWF and the World Conservation Union, plays a major role in the international effort to curb the illegal trade in endangered species and their body parts.

Meeting Tomorrow's Challenges

Today, the scientific compass guiding all of our work is the Global 200 -- a list of the most biologically rich and representative places on earth. While our scientists continue to map and catalogue their biodiversity, WWF conservation and finance experts work with governments, corporations, other international organizations and local stakeholders to build partnerships to protect the natural wealth of these keystone eco-regions.

One of our largest and most ambitious current partnerships, with the World Bank and the government of Brazil, aims to more than triple the amount of Amazon rain forest under protection over the next 10 years. Launched with the creation in 2002 of the 15,000-square mile Tumucumaque National Park, the Amazon Region Protected Areas (ARPA) initiative envisions a network of more than 80 parks covering an area the size of California.

A global leader in marine conservation, WWF is also partnering with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to create, over the next decade, an international network of 100 marine protected areas.

Projects on such large scales require detailed planning and major, long-term commitments. But it is our conviction that, to hold the line against further biodiversity loss, conservation must meet the threats we face on a scale commensurate with the challenge. With a global network of experts, more than four decades of experience and a worldwide membership, World Wildlife Fund is uniquely positioned to meet that challenge.