Stories

For millions of years, beavers have engineered small ponds in which they can build their home. Carefully arranging sticks and packing the spaces with mud, grass, and rocks, beavers create a dam that slows the flow of moving water. Because of their boastful building skills, beavers have earned the title of “ecosystem engineers” and are recognized as keystone species.

As 2024 comes to a close, we are taking a moment to download some of the pivotal moments that shaped this “Year in Climate.” From groundbreaking regulatory decisions to innovative funding mechanisms, 2024 demonstrated the growing momentum of climate action that we need to take forward into next year and beyond.

What a year it’s been. 2024 held plenty of hard news for nature, but there were also notable wins. Those successes deserve to be celebrated!

A new report by WWF highlights these findings and the region’s incredible biodiversity and it's just the tip of the iceberg.

With threats to red panda habitat and population declines, Bhutan's first population survey of the endangered species comes at a critical time.

Monarch butterflies are among the truly rare insects that so many have dedicated time and effort to protect, and yet still their numbers decline. The butterfly’s population has dwindled so much, in fact, that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed Endangered Species Act protection for this remarkable animal. Where have we gone wrong?

After two years of dedicated negotiations, world leaders could not agree on a global plastics treaty to counter plastic pollution's escalating environmental, economic, and health threats.

An impressive 742 new species of wildlife and plants have been identified in the Congo Basin from 2013 to 2023, highlighting the region's remarkable biodiversity and an urgent need to protect one of the world's most vital ecosystems.

An exchange between Tanzania and Indonesia helps benefit both the nutrition and income needs of coastal communities as well as the health of marine ecosystems.

Large herbivores, like the plains bison in North America’s grasslands, keep habitats and ecosystems intact and vibrant at a time when nature is facing devastating losses.

This year’s COP in many ways proved difficult to pin down. Branded as the “Finance COP,” the final decision was decidedly mixed. 

A much-anticipated announcement on the commitment to a new climate finance goal came together in the wee hours after COP29 was slated to end, providing a target of $300 billion in annual mobilized finance by 2035 by developed countries to help developing countries transition to clean energy and combat the impacts of climate change. However, many in the Global South felt disappointed in this result given the number required for them to address climate change by 2035 is estimated at over $1 trillion per year. While not clearly defined, the language of the agreement provides an opportunity for private sector finance and market mechanisms to generate additional capital to close the gap in needed finance.

For five generations, the Williams family harvested crops in the Mississippi Delta, from sharecroppers to farm owners. Today, their Delta Dirt Distillery is part of a small group of people farming differently in the Mississippi Delta.

Climate activist Peter Pham is the recipient of the WWF-US Youth Conservation Leadership Award for 2024. This prestigious award is given annually to a young conservation leader for outstanding contributions to the environmental field.

Marisa Tellez has devoted her life to crocodiles, first as a biologist and now as the Executive Director of the Crocodile Research Coalition, a nonprofit she founded to support the conservation of crocodiles and their habitats. Crocodiles keep aquatic ecosystems in balance as apex predators, but they also hold a cultural significance in Central America. 

The Climate COP is halfway over and, to put it simply: while things have been urgent for some time, we have now come to a dire moment.

The US is now looking ahead to a new administration and Congress. But what won't change is the dire need to protect nature. No matter who holds power in Washington, WWF’s priorities remain steady: protect nature and reduce the most pressing threats to Earth’s diversity of life.

Nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, represent each country’s plan for how it aims to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Azerbaijan will host the 29th UN climate negotiations, called COP29 for short. One of the key elements connecting this COP to the others is finance–-because with all that needs doing in order to reach our climate goals of limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and in order to protect our communities from the impacts of climate change that are already happening, the one essential element that all our efforts share is a need for capital.

For three days in September, more than 80 people gathered in Lima, Peru to map a future for conservation.

Known for their distinctive humps, camels are synonymous with desert environments. In their domesticated state, they provide vital resources such as milk, meat, wool, and transportation to pastoral communities in Africa and Asia, particularly in regions like northern Kenya. However, their importance in ecological and climate resilience is not as widely known. Camels, both in the wild and in their domesticated state, are essential to sustaining more arid ecosystems such as deserts, prairies, and steppes, along with the communities who live there.

This is the last critical moment to prevent irreversible economic, health, and environmental damage from plastic pollution. Read on to learn more about the negotiations, WWF’s role in enacting change, and why we must reach an agreement.

Vultures are nature’s dedicated waste management specialists; they help with nutrient cycling and even reduce the spread of disease. In the US, we have turkey vultures, black vultures, and endangered California condors, but worldwide we’re currently sharing the planet with 23 vulture species. Vultures typically have bald heads and excellent vision, and some, like the turkey vulture, even have a keen sense of smell. They’re fascinating birds and we’d like to share a few ways we consider vultures to be nature’s influencers.