Posted on August, 06 2001
However, despite the myriad challenges, WWF has chalked up some impressive achievements with the help of some five million supporters and a global network active in more than 90 countries. Over 300 protected areas around the world exist today thanks to the organization's work. In the last five years alone WWF, as a key player or as the central agent, has succeeded in bringing numerous species back from the brink of extinction, forged key international wildlife conservation treaties, worked with hundreds of local communities, and brokered precedent-setting relationships with global corporate entities.
It all began in 1960, when eminent British biologist Sir Julian Huxley visited Africa to research a series of articles. He was shocked by what confronted him. "Many parts which, 50 years ago, were swarming with game are now bare of wildlife" he wrote. His words prompted businessman Victor Stolan to write to Sir Julian suggesting that fundraising, on an international scale, would be needed to tackle the problem.
And at that moment, the concept of the World Wildlife Fund was born. The idea was that the fund would complement the World Conservation Union-IUCN, an organization set up in 1948 to conduct scientific conservation programmes.
Along with Max Nicholson, an ecologist and Director General of Britain's Nature Conservancy, Peter Scott, founder of the Wildfowl Trust, and Guy Mountfort, director of a large international advertising agency and an amateur ornithologist, Sir Julian and IUCN set the wheels in motion to form an international fundraising group dedicated to raise funds for nature. So on 11 September 1961 in the small picturesque Swiss town of Morges, where IUCN had its headquarters, WWF came into being with the aim, quite simply, to save life on Earth.
Formed from a unique blend of business leaders, scientists and government leaders, and with the support and guidance of HRH Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, WWF has evolved over 40 years to become the influential and independent global conservation organization that we know today. WWF currently supports well over 1,000 conservation projects around the world which form the core of its programme. It has been active at the policy level both nationally and internationally for at least 20 years and its work has helped establish most of the world's international conservation treaties.
The Launching of the New Ark, WWF's first annual report published in 1965 catalogued wildlife in one of the organization's first conservation projects, the wetlands of Doñana, in southern Spain. It was an early template for all WWF's subsequent research, which today enables it to chronicle species decline, warn of immediate environmental threats, and report new species discoveries.
To keep up with the changing face of conservation and the environmental movement, WWF has not only grown in size and stature but it has also matured in its understanding of what has gone wrong and what is required to put things right. WWF's focus has evolved from its localized efforts in favour of single species that characterized the organization in the 1960s to new horizons encompassing national, regional and global scales of complexity.
"We are entering an era of eco-efficiency," says Dr Martin. "Our objectives have never been clearer: slow climate change, reduce toxics in the environment, protect our oceans and fresh waters, stop deforestation, and save species.
"But I think our greatest achievement over the past 40 years is spreading the message," says Dr Martin. "Through us people know that nature counts."
(730 words)
*Elizabeth Foley is a freelance writer and film maker based in London, UK
Related links