How does Wild Wonderful World #InvestInOurPlanet?
Your choices today can change our world tomorrow.
Africa’s people are facing a wide range of challenges, including biodiversity decline, rising global temperatures, and declining opportunities for rural economies. In fact, it is not just Africa: half the world’s GDP is dependent on nature and the degradation of ecosystems is affecting about 40% of the world’s population already, threatening human health, livelihoods and food security. According to the UN, the world must restore an area the size of China to meet current commitments on nature and global warming. In money terms, this means that world needs to quadruple its annual investment in nature if the climate, biodiversity and land degradation crises are to be tackled by the middle of the century. That figure equates to just 0.1% of global GDP every year.
No matter where you are in the world, you can #InvestInOurPlanet today & contribute to making a difference for the better. Wild Wonderful World exists for this exact purpose, to empower anyone to #IgniteChange in the world of conservation.
Our goals to #IgniteChange in conservation in Africa & beyond are:
- to provide on-demand emergency funding for life-saving interventions for all wildlife in need
- to enable actors on-the-ground with longterm funding to execute projects on the frontlines of conservation: re-wilding our planet, expanding or connecting existing wilderness areas, or supporting a keystone species in the ecosystem
- to make aerial support accessible to significantly increase efficiency in conservation projects
Why us?
Our non-profit organisation runs on a 100% donation model, meaning that 100% of donations received goes straight into wildlife conservation - with no admin or running costs deducted.
Our team’s 40+ years combined conservation & wildlife experience, has taught us a thing or two about Africa’s conservation challenges. Where major funding is available for high-profile & large scale projects, a huge funding gap exists for so-called “frontier” projects. These are projects working to preserve or rebuild ecosystems on the fringes of ‘safari Africa’. These projects often work with lesser known species, like the Southern Ground Hornbill, or are intended to expand wilderness areas where (historical and current) political or social pressures impeded growth and responsible management.
As most of our team have been actively working in the safari and conservation industries for over 10 years, we have created a large network of wildlife veterinarians, wildlife guides & anti-poaching rangers, nature reserve managers, and NGOs across Africa. This gives us early access to budding projects, and enables us to identify genuine needs and valuable projects that will have a real impact. Through our communication lines with these actors on the ground, we are in an exceptional situation to sift through the thousands - if not millions - of conservation projects out there; so you don’t have to. Our backgrounds as safari guides gives us a unique perspective and a unique connection to high-profile donors who share our values of enjoying pristine wilderness spaces. This combination puts us in a extraordinary position to connect passionate funders from across the globe to impactful conservation projects in Africa and beyond.
Our promise to you
If you choose to donate to Wild Wonderful World conservation, we commit to:
- allocating 100% of your funds to authoritative and accountable organisations: we make sure supported projects are thoroughly vetted
- ensuring that your funds are used as you chose or where they are most impactful, whether that is for emergency or longterm project funding. These are projects that have no alternative funding available to successfully start or complete their goals.
- providing comprehensive donor feedback, so you can verify that your funds are used to optimise impact
Putting our money where our mouth is
A snapshot overview of our current & past frontier projects:
Reviving Angola’s national parks: In collaboration with African Parks, Wild Wonderful World will be part of the first collaring operations in Iona National Park & Luengue-Luiana National Park. Both parks are now under African Parks management and are slowly recovering from the hardships of the Angola Civil War. Wild Wonderful World will be funding the veterinary costs for the collaring of 56 animals (ranging from plains game like Zebra and Roan, to carnivore and elephant) across both reserves. The GPS tracking data is critical for the identification of corridors and areas used by wildlife. This will assist in focussing resources to the most-used areas within the national parks, optimising efficiency of the limited funds available. Both projects hold tremendous value in reviving two of the largest trans-frontier conservation areas in Africa, and their success will have a ripple effect across more than 550,000km2 of continuous wilderness area across Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Bees to the rescue: We partnered with the Zambezi Elephant Fund to establish a community-led beekeeping project within one of the five villages in the Gache-Gache community, as a pilot project for potential expansion into four other nearby villages. The project forms part of a larger, ongoing human-wildlife conflict mitigation project underway in the Gache-Gache community, by using beehive fences to deter elephants from raiding crops.
Wild Dog collarings & translocations: since 2020, Wild Wonderful World has supported several Wild Dog re-introduction projects run by the Endangered Wildlife Trust. Known as one of Africa’s most endangered species, Wild Dogs are notoriously difficult to protect as they require a vast amounts of land on which to hunt and breed. Fitting GPS collars on key individuals enables us to ensure their safety by tracking the packs’ movements. Where reserves are fenced off, translocations are essential to managing the meta population of Wild Dogs in South Africa & ensuring their survival. You can help, by sponsoring a GPS tracking collar.
The APNR Ground Hornbill Project was one of the very first organisations that we supported through our Frontier Projects. The Southern Ground Hornbill is a keystone species and effective seed disperser that contributes to ecological succession processes. Wild Wonderful World contributes to the Ground Hornbill conservation by sponsoring artificial nests, as well as the re-introduction project of redundant chicks. Click here to support Ground Hornbill conservation.
Elephants Alive and the largest, consecutive elephant identification and GPS tracking study in Southern Africa. With 28 years of individual elephant ID studies and 25 years of GPS collar tracking, Elephants Alive runs one of the largest elephant tracking studies in Southern Africa. Elephants are known as the highway builders of Africa. As a keystone species, their migratory movements form pathways used by all smaller species within the ecosystems created. Wild Wonderful World supports Elephants Alive’s work by funding collarings across Southern Africa and creates awareness through virtual collaring events. The GPS tracking data informs us about high-traffic wildlife corridors, which are potential hotspots for human-wildlife conflict and thus of high importance when implementing mitigation tactics. Support elephant conservation by donating an elephant tracking collar.
Interested to learn more about our vision to #IgniteChange in conservation?
Tune into Wild Earth’s fireside chat this upcoming Earth Day! Saturday, 22 April 2023, at 7PM SAST
Stay tuned for our follow up post, detailing how we select projects and how they #ignitechange in conservation and #InvestInOurPlanet to re-wild and re-build ecosystems across Africa.
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