An Israeli NGO that crowdfunds cash to buy land that’s wealthy in threatened biodiversity has, over the previous decade, protected 100 threatened species in six international locations.
That is My Earth’s (TiME) projects over the past nine years have raised over $580,000 to avoid wasting greater than 13 sq. kilometers (5 sq. miles) of key tracts of land across the globe. This land has helped increase or join protected areas, supplied corridors for animal migration, and conserved giant territories for predators reminiscent of eagles and large cats to roam.
The land acquisition reduces deforestation and deters unlawful loggers, hunters, and squatters. A marine challenge established just a few years in the past on an atoll close to Belize Metropolis in Central America has helped discourage unsustainable fishing practices and the extraction of assets, in addition to growth and dredging.
Every year, a handful of tasks are voted on. It prices a minimal of $1 per 12 months to hitch the group and to get the best to vote on which threatened habitat needs to be saved. The group at present has greater than 7,000 members and is operating its tenth marketing campaign.
‘It’s not logical to show with out doing something about it’
TiME is the brainchild of Uri Shanas, who earned a PhD in zoology from Tel Aviv College, accomplished a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia College, after which joined the Division of Biology and Surroundings on the College of Haifa–Oranim.
He began instructing about nature preservation some 25 years in the past and was shocked on the tempo of extinction.
“At some stage, I began to assume, cling on, it’s not logical that I ought to train with out doing something about it,” recalled Shanas.
Uri Shanas, throughout a tour with the Higa-onon indigenous folks of Mount Sagyaan rainforest within the Philippines, July 20, 2025. (Courtesy, Uri Shanas)
In 2015, he established TiME, which, to the most effective of his information, is the world’s first worldwide, democratic, volunteer-based, crowdfunded, nonprofit group geared to purchasing land the place biodiversity is wealthy however threats are imminent.
Based on the World Wildlife Fund, the typical measurement of wildlife populations monitored by the Zoological Society of London dropped by 73 % in simply 50 years, between 1970 and 2020.
Biodiversity — a variety of dwelling issues — allows planet Earth to take care of clear air and water, yield meals, and regulate the local weather. Air and water are below large risk from air pollution, some pollinators are in decline, and the local weather is altering, bringing extra excessive occasions, reminiscent of wildfires, heatwaves, and flooding.
Local weather change is being pushed by human exercise reminiscent of deforestation, agriculture (together with livestock farming), and different adjustments in land use (which launch carbon saved in habitats reminiscent of forests into the ambiance), and the burning of fossil fuels reminiscent of oil, coal, and gasoline for electrical energy, transportation, and business.
The decline in animal populations is spurred by local weather change in addition to the loss and degradation of wildlife habitats, overharvesting of assets, invasive species, and illness.
The orchid species Dracula lemurella of Colombia, listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Pink Listing, grows in Colombia’s Los Magnolios nature reserve. (Courtesy SalvaMontes, Colombia)
“What’s lovely, and fairly wonderful, is that each greenback donated to TiME saves a median of 24 sq. meters [258 square feet] of forest. That’s a superb conversion price, and it’s due to our mannequin. Anybody who cares about nature received’t discover a higher funding.”
The folks’s selection
Three tasks are put up on TiME’s web site every year to be voted on by midnight on December 31. Every vote carries the identical weight, regardless of how a lot every member has contributed. The cash raised is then break up among the many tasks in response to the proportion of votes. Nonetheless, if not sufficient cash has been raised to purchase land for the much less well-liked tasks, it both waits till the minimal sum has been reached or goes into the pot for a challenge chosen by the bulk.
Voters this 12 months are deciding amongst a number of tasks within the Philippines and Colombia.
On Mount Sagyaan in the Philippines, which is threatened by miners, loggers, house owners of monoculture (single crop) plantations, and actual property builders, 50 hectares (slightly below 125 acres) of intact montane (mountain) rainforest will be bought. The goal is to assist save the house of the Higa-onon indigenous folks, keep their nature-based tradition, and shield native endangered wildlife. If the land will not be bought for conservation, outsiders are prone to persuade tribal clans to promote land.
A Philippine tarsier, one of many smallest primates, labeled as close to threatened on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature’s Pink Listing, photographed within the Mount Sagyaan rainforest within the Philippines. Hunters and trappers reportedly shake these little creatures out of their bushes or chop down the branches. (Irit Shanas)
On the Los Magnolios nature reserve in Colombia, 246 hectares (610 acres) will be bought to increase the reserve and set up a hall for threatened and endemic species such because the critically endangered Handley’s Slender Opossum and susceptible Silvery-brown Tamarin. Logging for timber extraction, coal manufacturing, and the enlargement of pasture lands for cattle farming are the main causes of the acute fragmentation and gradual disappearance of this habitat. If this land will not be bought, the forests will probably be degraded and additional fragmented over the subsequent 10 years, making future populations of among the threatened endemic species unviable.
A member of the Embera Chami folks whose land in Colombia is being offered off for petroleum, mining, or logging contracts. (Courtesy, the Embera Chami folks)
There are 20 to 80 hectares (50 to 200 acres) of deep jungle at the border of the Tropical Andean biodiversity hotspot in Colombia. It varieties a part of the hall for the Tropical Andean Jaguar and is without doubt one of the final rangelands of the susceptible Andean Bear. It’s house to an estimated 8,803 endemic species and has not less than 20 species which can be designated as endangered or susceptible. The Putumayo Amazon has confronted a 16% annual deforestation price in some areas, as a consequence of authorized and unlawful actions, together with petroleum extraction, mining, logging, and narcotics trafficking. Indigenous leaders within the area have requested that assist be given to the dispossessed Embera Chami indigenous group to purchase land and create a reserve. If this land will not be bought, it is going to be auctioned for petroleum, mining, or logging contracts.
Extra bang on your buck
TiME undertook a challenge with the College of Haifa in 2024 to calculate the economic value of its activities to make sure that its restricted assets go the place they are often most helpful, and to succeed in out to new audiences who could also be unaware of conservation’s value to humans.
The outcomes, together with inflation, had been that total, each US greenback invested by TiME in a habitat returns a worth of $212.80, of which $120.60 goes to the area people.
People and organizations from abroad who want to purchase land for environmental preservation should fill out detailed varieties and undergo intense vetting by a scientific advisory board of worldwide consultants.
Jaguars, like this one pictured in Brazil’s Pantanal, are close to threatened within the wild. Certainly one of TiME’s three tasks this 12 months is to purchase a tract of land within the Putumayo Amazon, which is house to jaguars, in addition to a dispossessed indigenous group, the Embera Chami. (Charles J. Sharp from Sharp Images, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
A key function of the group is that the land is bought within the names of native folks or organizations based mostly on the concept that long-term success relies on the involvement of these dwelling in and across the forests.
Youngsters on the Bi’ne B elementary college close to Deir el-Asad in northern Israel crowd round an iguana, November 28, 2022. (Sue Surkes/Occasions of Israel)
Along with shopping for land, TiME presents course syllabi for school and university students on local weather change and nature preservation.
All donations go to the tasks. There isn’t a journey finances at TiMe, Shanas stated, including that he financed his latest journeys to tasks within the Philippines and Borneo. Different bills, reminiscent of the web site, are funded by board members and exterior funds raised for the aim. Further funds are raised by way of lectures and funds by native authorities for instructional actions.
“We don’t journey to see the areas in precept and don’t encourage journey, however depend on volunteers and native organizations that we belief after we have now checked them out completely,” Shanas stated. “Yearly, I attempt to get to one of many tasks — with my very own funding.”
