Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos’s Earth Fund is committing $100 million to a new international alliance aimed at recovering species at the highest risk of extinction.
The Species Recovery Alliance represents a combined $500 million commitment from nine founding organisations. It was announced at the Leaders’ Summit of COP17, the United Nations biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia.
The Earth Fund’s contribution was confirmed by a spokesperson. The alliance’s other founding members are Leonardo DiCaprio’s Re:wild, Rainforest Trust, the Colossal Foundation, the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Fondation Segré, the Franklinia Foundation, the Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust and WildLives Earth.
The organisations will not place their money into a single central fund. Instead, each will distribute its own grants while co-ordinating with the other members.
Funding will support conservation groups and local partners working on species classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered, critically endangered or extinct in the wild.
Projects could involve captive breeding and release programmes, habitat restoration, disease management or efforts to control invasive species. Progress will be assessed using the IUCN’s Red List and its Green Status of Species.
More than 49,500 species are considered threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List. The three categories targeted by the alliance contain more than 31,000 species between them.
“We know how to bring species back from the brink,” said Cristián Samper, the Earth Fund’s managing director and leader of nature solutions.
“What too many conservation teams lack is reliable funding to keep that work going. Rebuilding a population can take years, and a break in support can put hard-won progress at risk.”
The Bezos Earth Fund’s species recovery plans
The alliance follows the Phoenix Species Project, launched in August by the Earth Fund and Re:wild. The two organisations each committed $100 million to the project, which aims to recover 100 critically endangered or extinct-in-the-wild species across 30 countries.
Among the species included are Madagascar’s golden-crowned sifaka and Australia’s night parrot.
“Kids fall in love with animals before anyone tells them those animals are disappearing. Ask any seven-year-old about their favourite creature. It’s something wild,” Sánchez Bezos said when the project was announced.
“Something most adults have never heard of. What do we tell them when the night parrot or the golden-crowned sifaka isn’t there anymore to fall in love with? This project is our answer.”
The new private-sector pledge comes as governments remain behind a target agreed at the 2022 biodiversity summit in Montreal to raise $200 billion a year for biodiversity by 2030.
OECD data showed that between $75 billion and $92 billion a year was raised from 2023 to 2025, less than half the target. A United Nations progress report also found that fewer than half of countries’ biodiversity targets were on track.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said.
Seventeen governments led by Colombia and Armenia have launched a separate Coalition of Action to Recover Endangered Species. Samper described the initiative as “an encouraging expression of ambition”, but said its next stage would be ensuring that ambition was matched by the resources required.
“Philanthropy can help accelerate recovery, and sustained public funding is essential to achieving it at scale,” he said.
Bezos launched the Earth Fund in 2020 with a pledge of $10 billion to tackle climate change and protect nature by 2030. The fund has so far awarded $2.4 billion, leaving more than $7 billion to distribute over roughly four years.
