Protect Earth's last wildernesses, $5 per acre

To all our supporters,

From when the Forever Wild initiative was first conceived, it was planned as a way to explore options to redefine our relationship with nature while ensuring the wellbeing of communities was not compromised. That means we were bound to find new ways, or change existing ways, of doing business and supporting livelihoods. In everything we do, nature and community must have equity, rather than decisions simply being about profit.

In 2022 we set about working with the Traditional Custodians, the Muluridji people, of our Tropical Wetlands property in Northern Australia. We also talked to the broader Indigenous community. We explored various ways to create a viable social enterprise that both supported local livelihoods and nature conservation. Over the course of 15 months, we co-designed a small but powerful social enterprise in the form of a wildlife lodge on our Tropical Wetlands reserve.

In July 2023 'Wild Nature Lodge' opened its doors, run in conjunction with a new, wholly-owned Indigenous company called Bana Bubu (Place of Water). The lodge is a business, but profits go back to the conservation actions at the Tropical Wetlands and to provide opportunities for the local Indigenous community. In 2024, for example, we (Forever Wild and Bana Bubu) aim to have an art fair on-site at the Tropical Wetlands Reserve, where local Indigenous artists can display and sell their work. It will be the first event of its type in the small community of Mareeba!

For conservation to be successful we MUST think and act differently. So far, conservation has failed to prevent widespread species loss. If we do not develop and prove models to redefine the relationship between people, economics and nature, we will not succeed in protecting the last wilderness landscapes on earth. The bulk of our work is to understand the hurdles to how we redefine the relationship, and then develop viable, achievable models to make it happen and for others to replicate.

By continuing to support the Forever Wild initiative, you are supporting an entirely new way of thinking and creating solutions to the challenges we face.

Thank you for all your support.

The Forever Wild Team

Links:

• Wild Nature Lodge opened on July 1 2023!!

Hi everyone,

 Forever Wild's staffing goal is only to have a small team, so that most of the funds we raise go towards innovation, land management, and creating opportunities for local communities. So far so good, though that means we are busy! But we love it :-)

There has been a huge amount happening. Forever Wild is rapidly being recognised in Australia as a leading organsiaion in tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis. We have created an Australian first with our recent acquisition of 560,000 acres, blending donations with carbon finance. We are also now about to launch a world-first in finance for applied conservation management.... You'll have to wait until next time to learn more though.

On the ground, things are just as busy. The tropical north of Australia saw a huge Wet Season, and our Wetlands reserve literally had rivers flowing across the land. The wildlife is happy though.

Also, this year we will be helping a local Indigenous organisation to start running some tours on the reserve. We assisted three ladies to establish the company and to do their business planning, and we are looking forward to their first venture with us later in 2023.

Work has begun on our Western Deserts program, and initial surveys have revealed a population of Mallee Fowl. This extraordinary species is part of a family of birds only found in Australia and the islands of Papua New Guinea / Irian Yaja. They create large mounds of earth and leaf litter, where the heat from composting material incubates the eggs. The Mallee Fowl is adapted to very dry environments, and is a threatened species. We have also done initial surveys of the spinifex lands (a type of spiky, desert grass that provides shelter to small animals). With over 2000 sq km to explore, it will be some time before we have the data.

Perhaps most critical at this time is our contribution to the climate crisis. The two Western Deserts properties will sequester over 400,000 tonnes of carbon over the next 20 years, and already store millions of tonnes that will now never be released under our managment.

So far, so good!

Best wishes to everyone,

The Forever Wild Team

Links:

• Parrots having a morning drink
• Check out our YouTube channel

After nearly two years of hard work, we are proud to announce that Forever Wild successfully raised over $1.7m to permanently protect 560,000 acres of beautiful wilderness. This land, comprising two vast properties in Western Australia, now protects thousands of species of animals and plants, and the new tree growth under our management will draw down over 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Never has a project like Forever Wild, of such large ambition and scale, been so important. Our goal is 5,000,000 acres by 2030, and that is just the starting point.

The world is facing a major threat from human-induced climate change, and we need bold, ambitious solutions.

In December 2022, governments from around the globe agreed to try to protect 30% of the Earth. Currently, only 17% of the entire earth, including oceans, is protected.

THANK YOU to all our donors. We know how hard it is to truly understand how important $5 is, and what we do with it. So thank you for your trust in us.

How did we achieve this massive milestone? We have used all the donations from GlobalGiving and elsewhere, and concurrently raised impact investment for biodiversity. Combined, we raised $1.7m to buy the land, set up our programs, hire staff and set up the plan for the landscape. 

In January we will upload the webpages for the two properties, so you can see what you have helped achieve, so please keep track of our website.

In 2023 we aim to do it all again, extending the Western Deserts Shared Earth landscape.

Please continue to support us, share our story on social media and encourage everyone you know to get involved and support the Forever Wild initiative in 2023.

If you have not read our last biennial report, find it here :-) 

And finally, we wish everyone a very happy New Year from the Forever Wild team.

Links:

• A short film from the Western Deserts landscape

The past few months has seen a great deal of our energy placed into communicating how we do things, not simply what we do. Forever Wild was not established to simply be another replica of so many existing NGOs. It was established to demonstrate that there is another way to do business, another way to have a relationship with our planet.

Our projects are not the reason we exist. We exist to develop and demonstrate a powerful model to redefine how we share this Earth. That's why we call our landscapes Shared Earth Landscapes; we share these places with so many other species, and we expect them to allow society to use the natural world to feed our economic system. And yet society generally gives nothing back.

So Forever Wild set out to change that. Our model relies on circular economics, feeding financial resources back into nature and remote communities while drawing on donations and large pools of private capital.

The Tropical Wetlands Shared Earth Landscape remains our primary pilot project, where we have now clearly shown the value of ultra-low impact business as a way to finance effective protection of the natural systems. We use the proceeds to fund critical land management, such as cool burns. These early Dry Season fires prevent wildlife later in the year, which can destroy the habitat and kill the animals we work to protect. Cool fires move slowly, they don’t burn everything and they leave all the critical habitat components for the animals - such as the delightful but endangered Northern Quoll in the video below :-)  Importantly, cool fires prevent the release of massive quantities of carbon from wildfire.

We also use the funds to support engagement with the First Nations people who used to roam this land, and who are the holders of deep knowledge about it.

In turn, the conservation and community engagement work we do in the landscape actually increases the value of the food that is produced, because that food is supporting a climate, conservation and cultural initiative. As it is higher value, we need less of it to be viable and therefore it has much less impact.

By supporting Forever Wild, you are supporting far more than a 'project'. You are supporting a movement, a way of thinking and doing business, and climate and conservation action that must endure.

Links:

• Endangered Northern Quoll on our Tropical Wetlands property
• A black-necked stork, early morning

Yes, 1 million acres! By 2024 we are confident that we will have expanded our Western Deserts landscape to 1 MILLION ACRES. We have a number of strategies in play, including working towards acquiring another 560,000 acres and developing programs on adjacent land wilderness land.

We know that simply creating more protected areas is not good enough, and will also never be enough to manage our climate challenges. While they are definitely important the scale is limited and does not acknowledge that we all share one Earth.

Therefore, as a socio-environmental enterprise, a great deal of Forever Wild's focus is on creating positive feedback loops from wilderness to society as tools to protect those wilderness areas. Unless we scale up efforts in a way that explicitly identifies human society, local economies and the environment as components of a whole, we will not succeed. 

The granite rock above, photographed in the Western Deserts, is a superb example of the flow we need to create, even where the problem is hard to tackle! We all live here together, and we have no choice except to figure out how to create our own fully interconnected planet.

Thank you to all our donors We blend all donations with impact investment and so each $5 actually supports between 5 to 10 acres of wilderness!! Now THAT is making every dollar count.

Best wishes from the Forever Wild Team, Australia.