Nine private funders launched the Species Recovery Alliance on Oct. 16 at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Yerevan, Armenia. They committed more than $500 million over five years to recover threatened species, according to a release from Re:wild, one of the founding members.
Who is in the Alliance and What It Targets
The founding members are the Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust, the Bezos Earth Fund, the Colossal Foundation, the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Fondation Segré, the Franklinia Foundation, Rainforest Trust, Re:wild and WildLives Earth. The release says the group aims to become the largest coordinated philanthropic effort for threatened species recovery.
The alliance focuses on species classified on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List as extinct in the wild, critically endangered or endangered. The release counts more than 31,000 such species, including more than 10,000 that are critically endangered. It says more than 10% of that group has fewer than 50 individuals left.
The members will not pool their money. The release says they will coordinate and align their investments, share knowledge and work with local partners. They plan to report progress using the Green Status of Species and the Red List, both International Union for Conservation of Nature frameworks. The members bring different specialties. According to the release, Franklinia supports conservation of threatened tree species and says threatened trees outnumber threatened land vertebrates by more than two to one.
Rainforest Trust has helped protect more than 70 million acres since 1988. The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, a joint initiative of several funders, has made more than $350 million in grants since 2001 to civil society groups and local communities in biodiversity hotspots. The Colossal Foundation uses technologies including de-extinction tools to help prevent extinctions of keystone species.
The Arithmetic behind the Headline Number
The release does not give a per-species figure. The following is a calculation from the cited figures, not a number the alliance published. A pledge of more than $500 million over five years averages $100 million a year. Spread evenly across 31,000 species, $500 million works out to about $16,100 per species over five years, or roughly $3,200 a year. The release does not say the money will be divided that way, and the members will direct their own funds, so the figure shows scale rather than a plan.
A second comparison comes from a program one of the members already runs. The Phoenix Species Project, a partnership of Bezos Earth Fund and Re:wild, committed $200 million at its Aug. 4 launch to recover 100 critically endangered species in 30 countries, according to the Bezos Earth Fund announcement. That is $2 million per species, about 124 times the $16,100 average across the full list. The Re:wild release says the alliance builds on Phoenix. It does not say whether the Phoenix money counts toward the $500 million.
The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund offers a third yardstick. Its $350 million in grants since 2001 covers about 25 years, or roughly $14 million a year by the same kind of division. The alliance’s $100 million a year is about seven times that pace, though the fund’s grants go to habitat and community work in hotspots and not only to single-species recovery.
The release also says more than 10% of the 31,000 species have fewer than 50 individuals. That works out to more than 3,100 species at that level, a number that frames how small many of these populations are.
Why Habitat Protection Alone Falls Short
The release cites research finding that 57% of threatened species need targeted interventions beyond habitat protection. It names conservation breeding, genetic rescue and invasive species control as examples. It does not name the study. Cristián Samper, managing director and leader of nature solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund, said in the release that protected areas alone cannot save every endangered species.
That position explains why the alliance is built around species-level work. Phoenix follows the same model. Barney Long, senior director of conservation strategies at Re:wild, said in the Bezos Earth Fund announcement that the fund is designed for sustained five-year support for each species. The announcement says Phoenix will publicly report population recovery and threat reduction.
James Deutsch, chief executive of Rainforest Trust, framed the stakes in the release. “Unlike most other forms of environmental loss, global species extinctions cannot be reversed,” Deutsch said. Wes Sechrest of Re:wild said in the release that species recovery has not received the attention and investment it needs.
Where the Governments Fit
A separate effort ran alongside the launch. The Coalition of Action to Recover Endangered Species, known as CARES, includes 17 governments led by Colombia and Armenia, according to the release body. The release’s meta description refers to a 16-nation coalition, so the two parts of the same page disagree on the count. CARES aims to accelerate national action to prevent extinction and advance Target 4 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, a target the Bezos Earth Fund describes as calling for halting extinctions and improving the conservation status of endangered species.
CARES is separate from the alliance’s funding. The release does not name the other participating governments or attach a dollar figure to the coalition. The two efforts share a goal, with private money in one and national policy in the other.
What to Watch
The alliance has set one measurable commitment: reporting progress through the Green Status of Species and the Red List. The release does not give a first reporting date, a target number of species recovered or a list of the species each member will support. The Re:wild release names no species from the Phoenix list of 100. The first test will be whether members publish what they spend and where. With the money coordinated and not pooled, each foundation’s own reporting will show whether the $100 million-a-year average holds. For the more than 3,100 species with fewer than 50 individuals, five years is a short window, and the release does not promise recovery for any named species.
