Protecting Irreplaceable Places - Our Planet's Most Biodiverse Regions

The single biggest threat to biodiversity and the survival of wildlife worldwide is deforestation and the degradation of wildlands. Protection of the last great forests is by far the most cost-effective way of addressing many of our global problems, from climate change to freshwater availability. The need to invest in their protection is more urgent than it's ever been.

KBA Workshop in Bhutan. Photo by: Penny Langhammer

Global Leadership

GWC is a founding member of the Key Biodiversity Areas Partnership, established by 12 of the world’s leading nature conservation organizations to identify, map and conserve the most important sites for life on Earth. With these and other partners, including the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and the IUCN Species Survival Commission, we are positioned to dramatically scale up protection of the world’s irreplaceable wild places.

Prioritizing Biodiversity

We prioritize working in our planet’s biodiversity hotspots and high biodiversity wilderness areas, regions of the world with exceptional concentrations of unique and threatened species. Within these regions we work to identify, monitor and conserve sites that contribute significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity, focusing on irreplaceable sites with unique opportunity for conservation.

Training course on PA management planning with participants from Antigua and Barbuda and Anguilla. Photo courtesy of Mike Appleton.

Baritú Marsupial Frog habitat in Baritú National Park. (Photo by Martín Boullhesen)

Local collaboration in wildlands

We assist local organizations and communities to create and expand protected areas through purchasing land as private reserves and establishing indigenous and community conserved areas. Working with local partners and communities, we help create protected sites, from community forests to national parks.

Managing Protected Areas

We support local partners to effectively manage sites through improved planning, capacity building, mentoring and community engagement. Where additional information is needed for high priority sites, we undertake targeted field exploration and research. Monitoring and evaluation is central to our conservation work.

Conservationists are already seeing impacts on water and other natural resources in the Junín Community Reserve. (Photo by William Sacher)

Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Partnership

We are proud to be one of 12 of the world’s leading nature conservation organizations on the Key Biodiversity Area Partnership. The KBA Partnership mobilizes the expertise, experience and resources of the partner organizations to: Identify, map and document Key Biodiversity Areas worldwide that, when conserved, will help ensure the long-term survival of the majority of the biodiversity that we know of on Earth, promote targeted conservation action in KBAs, and inform and influence public policy and private sector decision-making that impacts KBAs.

Saving species is what we do,
and so can you!

Join us in saving wildlife and protecting biodiversity around the world!