1wild conservation
Our commitment
1wild offers renewable grants to conservation programmes protecting some of the most precious species and ecosystems on the planet.
We focus on globally endangered and evolutionarily distinct species (EDGE species), ecologically critical (keystone) species, as well as hotspots of biodiversity. We also prefer supporting underfunded conservation initiatives.
In the wild, survival is always a walk on knife's edge — for individuals, populations, species and ecosystems. Facing the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, the remaining near-natural ecosystems and wild species need all the support they can get to survive.
Some grants listed were funded before the formal establishment of 1wild foundation — yet according to the same concept and philosophy. Project leads and contacts for such grants may have changed.
How we work
Given the huge needs, meaningful conservation requires a very careful choice of targets, as well as a rational, entrepreneurial assessment of a programme's strategic viability and implementation quality. Some criteria are particularly important to us.
To make the most of our funding, we focus on species and habitats of exceptional importance and under high threat — emotional appeal or not.
These include EDGE species, keystone species, and biodiversity or EDGE hotspots.
At 1wild, we want to address key conservation issues — avoiding the common preference for cute creatures (mammal and bird bias). However, picking the right targets can be difficult. There are huge knowledge gaps regarding the vast majority of living species. Thus, using charismatic "flagship species" to help protect an ecosystem with un-cuddly high-priority species is justifiable. Ultimately we must preserve ecosystems and biomes because without them, the long-term survival of the species adapted to them is illusory.
On the EDGE: cut a branch or clip a twig?
EDGE is a method to redefine global species conservation priorities. It ranks species according to their worthiness of protection.
EDGE stands for “Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered”. The more unusual and threatened a species is, the more worthy of protection it is.
Species that are particularly worthy of protection are compiled in EDGE lists. Their extinction would cut off entire branches of the tree of life - and thus curb enormous potential for further development.
EDGE lists classify the listed species according to their conservation value. They evaluate each species according to extinction risk, duration of independent development and evolutionary irreplaceability. This is used to calculate an EDGE score, which results in an EDGE rank for conservation priority (with rank 1 as the highest value).
For example, mouse-like rodents (B, C) make up almost half of the approximately 4,660 known mammal species. In contrast, a pangolin or echidna (A) is a very unusual life form. It has developed independently over long periods of evolutionary history and has only a few close relatives. This makes it extremely valuable: it represents a branch of the tree of life, not just a twig.
Two examples of high priority species from EDGE lists.
Gingko is a "living fossil", the last living species in the order Gingkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago, and the number one conservation priority of 258 EDGE-listed Gymnosperms (a clade also including conifers and cycads). The Palawan pangolin is the number 6 conservation priority among 585 EDGE-listed mammals.
The trouble with keystone species
Some species are essential to the functioning of an ecosystem. Protecting them is particularly important. Unfortunately, many keystone species are not recognized as such.
Keystone species are those which are fundamental to the functioning of their ecosystem, such as, for instance, ecosystem engineers. Each species plays a role - it "performs a job" - in its ecosystem. If it goes extinct or becomes very rare, the ecosystem changes. For ecosystems which we don't know well (the vast majority), such changes are unpredictable, depending on the importance of the species affected. Keystone species include well-known ones such as jaguars, beavers, and some sharks, but also species whose pivotal role is less well known, such as fig trees, krill, mangrove crabs, gopher tortoises, and prairie dogs. Because of its critical function, the loss of a keystone species results in a fundamental disruption of the ecosystem it controls. Unfortunately, identifying a keystone species requires extensive research - and for most ecosystems, we simply don't know it. So disrupting ecosystems is a pretty bad idea.
Some keystone species keep a low profile - even if they are colourful.
Blue Fiddler crabs play multiple structural and functional roles in intertidal ecosystems.
Bumblebees fulfil a key function as pollinators.
Starfish are keystone species in tidal ecosystems on the Pacific coast.
Blue Fiddler crabs play multiple structural and functional roles in intertidal ecosystems.
Hotspots of biodiversity and EDGE zones
A few small regions on the planet support an extraordinary wealth of species that can’t be found anywhere else. They are the most important areas of the biosphere.
Conservationists are familiar with hotspots of biodiversity - relatively small regions with a particularly high number of species.
© Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://x.com/IPBES/status/1630179188731703296
Similarly, 25 EDGE zones have been identified which host a high number of EDGE species. Protecting these regions is critical for saving large amounts of threatened evolutionary history.
EDGE zones partially overlap with hotspots of biodiversity, but they are much smaller. They are home to many endemic species, suffer from particularly high human impact and are also currently poorly protected.
In addition to hotspots of biodiversity, and partly overlapping with some of them, there are EDGE Zones, i.e. areas with a particularly high proportion of EDGE species.
In this map, tetrapod EDGE Zones (red) form a complementary set of 25 grid cell clusters containing large and unique accumulations of tetrapod threatened evolutionary history. They are superimposed over existing Biodiversity Hotspots, where colours represent per grid cell threatened evolutionary history, increasing from shades of dark blue through to orange.
© Pipins et al.: Advancing EDGE Zones to identify spatial conservation priorities of tetrapod evolutionary history, Nature Communications, volume 15, Article number: 7672 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51992-5.
Underfunded programmes
We take pride in helping to kick off impactful conservation activities through the seed capital provided by our grants.
Whilst huge donations are made annually to a large number of charities addressing human needs, many conservation programmes are severely underfunded. They have to rely on volunteer work, small donations and shoestring budgets. This is in stark contrast to the importance of their work.
