Dear readers,

Many of you may not know know much about WildlifeDirect and what we are trying to achieve through this website.

WildlifeDirect, initially known as the African Conservation Fund (ACF), was created in 2004 to help support the significant unmet needs in wildlife conservation, particularly in Africa, but also across the globe. Dr. Richard Leakey, a respected and well-known conservationist, and others interested in conservation conceived of a new way to approach the difficult task of raising funds for on-the-ground conservation efforts, particularly in times of crisis.

Our mission is two-fold: first, we intend to create a means by which on-the-ground conservationists could reach out to the global community for support of their ongoing work, and second, to create a “virtual endowment”, a vast online community of individual donors worldwide who are interested in supporting wildlife conservation and who could be mobilized, in a time of crisis, to offer support and resources.

Unlike actual endowments where funds are collected and deposited into a bank, a “virtual endowment” is money that remains in the hands of their donors until it is needed, and, at that point in time, those individuals who have been educated through interaction with the blogger conservationists would be mobilized to address the crisis.

We believe that creating and empowering a community of a million people who would give five to ten dollars a person, we can create a deep, bottom-up and sustainable ability to respond to an emergency. This will uniquely position us to create an African-based solution to a global problem.

WildlifeDirect’s commitment has been to bring the authentic, uncensored and compelling voices of working field conservationists to individuals anywhere in the world and to promise that 100% of the contributions to the bloggers (less bank fees) go to the intended recipient. Through its powerful Internet platform, WildlifeDirect can communicate, educate, network, and organize conservation stakeholders and ultimately act as a force for change in the conservation world.

To ensure 100% of the donations go to the conservationist of the ground, Wildlifedirect tries to maintain a low cost operation made of only the basic staff and low capital based operation. However, the organization needs to support core costs in order to continue supporting these very worthwhile community based conservation efforts. 

We currently have 84 conservation blogs and these attract over 70,000 unique visitors each month. The global economic crisis is hitting us all hard. We have already heard that some of our partners are unable to pay salaries this month. At Wildilfedirect we are making cutbacks in an effort to survive these tough economic times.  We hope you will consider supporting us through this global crisis.

We thank you for your support to date and invite you to make a further commitment to WildlifeDirect.

With Warm regards

Paula Kahumbu

Executive Director