2007 Annual Report

Our conservation success spans more than 40 countries on four continents. When it comes to determining our priorities, science leads the way. Using cutting-edge methods, we pinpoint specific regions rich in biological value — where people, plants and animals are desperately in need of conservation action. We focus on places where each dollar we spend will do the most good.

Climate
We made the connection between healthy forests and climate change two decades ago, and our work today reflects that early awareness.

• In FY07, we began restoring hundreds of hectares of forest in Tengchong, China, in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and the Yunnan Forestry Department.
• The Tengchong project is the first of its kind to meet strict Kyoto Protocol requirements for combating climate change, and the first to satisfy the new Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standards developed by CI and its partners.
• CI has more than a dozen similar forest carbon projects planned or started with partners, including Toyota, Starbucks and United Technologies.
• In Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, we examined more frequent El Niño ocean-warming cycles that have destroyed much of the area’s coral reefs to determine how to protect such unique and valuable biodiversity.

READ MORE: Learn what CI's projects around the world are doing. Download our 2007 Annual Report.

Forests
Healthy forests are parts of nature's solution to climate change. In the past three years, our success in saving forests is the equivalent of taking 8 millions cars off the road.

• In Brazil, the governor of Pará state made an unprecedented pledge to conserve an area of the Amazon large enough to be seen from space. Creating the seven new protected areas took major financial and technical support from CI’s Global Conservation Fund (GCF), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, CI-Brazil and its local partner IMAZON — showing how broad partnerships can bring change on a global scale.
• In eastern Madagascar, we are working with the government and local communities to link three national reserves into a 4,250-square kilometer conservation corridor that helps lemurs and other threatened wildlife survive while maintaining the natural resources and services that sustain local people.
• A debt-for-nature swap using GCF funding will enable the Guatemalan government to invest more than $24 million to help protect threatened forest in four areas over the next 15 years.

Communities
Throughout our history, CI has worked with local communities to secure and manage 14,000 square kilometers of new protected areas and 25,000 square kilometers of existing protected areas. In FY07, our partner communities proved once again that their stewardship and knowledge is crucial to conservation success.

• The Wai Wai indigenous group in Guyana, with support from CI, developed and adopted a conservation management plan for its homeland of more than 6,000 square kilometers of pristine rain forest.
• In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a new generation of local conservationists is leading efforts to save traditional lands and threatened gorillas. In FY07, the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology awarded degrees to its first graduates, who have since returned to their homes to work as rangers and protected area managers.
• CI-Suriname and the Trio people of south Suriname, together with the Inter-American Development Bank and the government of Suriname, launched the Iwaana Samu ecotourism program and lodge, the first eco-lodge in the region.

Species
The first results of CI's global assessment provide fresh information on a range of species from great apes to Galapagos seaweeds and North American reptiles.

• New species discovered included a mouse lemur, a poison dart frog, a gecko, two lizards and at least 19 katydids, an invertebrate species resembling grasshoppers.
• Assessments conducted by CI, IUCN and partners to inform the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a global standard for the conservation status of species that influences conservation action and policy.
• FY07 delivered the first-ever assessments of reef-building corals, providing the first look at the pattern of biodiversity at risk in the ocean — as well as the first set of results from the Global Reptile Assessment.
• Support from CI and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) helped scientists and government authorities successfully nominate nearly 10,000 square kilometers of Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

TAKE A LOOK: See how CI is working to bring people and nature into balance. Download our 2007 Annual Report.

Oceans
Two years ahead of schedule, CI achieved its goal of creating 20 new marine protected areas.

• CI’s collaboration with partners led to creation of 378,917 square kilometers of new marine protected areas in seven countries.
• A major highlight was the discovery of new deep reefs off Brazil that may equal all the previously known coral reefs in the South Atlantic.
• In Indonesia’s Papuan Bird’s Head Seascape, Raja Ampat was declared a maritime regency and a network of seven new MPAs was created.
• The Global Marine Partnership Fund, in collaboration with the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, launched an innovative pilot project to develop a marine management plan for the Main Hawaiian Islands.
• Wal-Mart brought together CI and other environmental groups with industry groups to develop a program for all farmed shrimp sold by Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club to come from processors and farmers meeting accepted environmental, social and ethical standards.

Freshwater
Due to unchecked development, pollution and now climate change, dwindling freshwater supplies threaten every living organism on the planet.

• We are working with Latin American governments and local communities to conserve the unique cloud forest ecosystem — known as the páramo — comprising grasslands of plants that trap water and fog high up in the Andes.
• CI and partners are setting up forest carbon projects that will protect the páramo ecosystem and generate revenue from the sale of carbon credits to be reinvested in conservation.
• With local partners, CI-Shanshui in China is setting up a plan to save Lashi Lake in Yunnan province and helping local farmers switch to more sustainable agricultural practices, while replanting trees in mountains from where the clean water flows.
• In Colombia, Fundación Omacha and CI are working on the consolidation of a private protected areas corridor as part of the El Tuparro Biosphere Reserve.

Land Use
As part of a major environmental initiative launched in FY07, Bank of America will directly support CI's conservation and business engagement programs.

• In FY07, CI and partners worked to increase protected areas on land and sea by more than 800,000 square kilometers — an area larger than Turkey — for the benefit of species, people and the planet as a whole.
• Save Your World became the first U.S. company to support our unique agreement to lease pristine tropical rain forest along Guyana’s largest river, the Essequibo. Together, we are protecting 81,000 hectares — including a major watershed — that would otherwise be open to logging.
• CI’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business worked with McDonald’s and leading soy traders Bunge and Cargill on an industry-wide moratorium against illegally grown soy in the Amazon.

IN DEPTH: Find out the full details of our year's accomplishments. Download our 2007 Annual Report.