• Neotropics — Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraquay, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela
• Africa and Madagascar — Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Namibia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania
• Asia/Pacific — Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands
• Australia, New Zealand
• Marine program — Brazil, Caribbean West Atlantic (Colombia, Venezuela), Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape (Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador), Gulf of California (Mexico), Madagascar, Milne Bay (Papua New Guinea), New Caledonia and Fiji, Peru, Philippines, Raja Ampat (Indonesia), Solomon Islands, Togean Islands (Indonesia)

CI's 2004 Annual Report lists a "senior leadership team" of 75 people: 4 top executives, 21 "headquarters leadership" (9 of whom have PhDs), 31 "in-country leadership" and 19 "in-country technical leadership". CI founder Peter Seligmann is CEO and Chairman of the Board; PhD biologist Russell Mittermeier is President; Gustavo Fonseca, PhD, is Executive VP, Programs and Science; and Niels Crone is CFO and Executive VP, Administration, Finance and Human Resources.

Field program staff include economists, biologists, anthropologists, social scientists, and legal and policy experts. More than 90% of CI's "in-country" staff are nationals of the countries where they work.

CI contracts out work to small, localized "conservation partners". About a quarter of their revenue in 2004 was spent that way and they plan to allocate one-third of the budget to "collaborative efforts" in the 2005 fiscal year.

The 33-member Board of Directors is chaired by CI CEO Peter Seligmann, and includes 21 business executives (mainly U.S., but also from Brazil, the Philippines and Great Britain), 3 people from law firms, two "conservationists", Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, Peter McPherson, President of Michigan State University, a teacher, actor Harrison Ford, Queen Noor of Jordan, and Lt. General S.K.I. Khama, Vice President of the Republic of Botswana.

Business executives on the CI Board include Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation and major philanthropist of conservation and science; Robert J. Fisher, Board Chairman of Gap, Inc.; Orin Smith, head of Starbucks Coffee; and Rob Walton, Board Chairman of Wal-Mart.

1. Biodiversity Hotspots — 34 regions around the world that make up 2.3% of the Earth's surface (7.9% of the land surface) but contain an estimated 50% of all vascular plant species and 42% of terrestrial vertebrate species, and harbour 75% of the most endangered mammals, birds and amphibians.
2. High-biodiversity Wilderness Areas — five large areas of relatively pristine habitat; these have more than 70% of their original vegetation, have low human population densities, and "are among the last places where indigenous peoples can maintain traditional lifestyles". The five, which comprise 6.1% of the planet's land area, are:
   • Amazonia
   • Congo Forests
   • Miombo-Mopane Woodlands and Savannahs of Southern Africa
   • New Guinea
   • North American Deserts (southwest U.S.A. and Mexico)
3. Key Marine Regions — a priority CI goal for 2005-2010 is to "establish protective management regimes in five key seascapes covering ocean ecosystems with the most species at risk" and to initiate 20 new marine protected areas. As part of this effort, CI addresses ocean governance, sustainable fisheries, integrated coastal and ecosystem based management, education, and research on marine management and on the conservation status of marines species.

About two-thirds of CI's program spending goes to its field programs (in the Neotropics, Asia/Pacific, and Africa & Madagascar) which it carries out directly or with local contractees. Smaller portions of its budget support three CI Centers:

• Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) — Accounting for 9% of expenses in FY 2004, CABS conducts conservation-related research, "links academic and applied conservation science", and provides scientific support to field operations. CABS was formed in 1998 with a grant from the Moore Foundation. Its biologists, social scientists and economists "compile and analyze baseline data on biodiversity, threats to it, and possible responses". It now includes a Tropical Ecology, Assessment and Monitoring Initiative that links tropical field stations in an information sharing network and provides for standardized monitoring protocols.
• Center for Conservation and Government (CCG)— CI uses its expertise on international conservation to advise the U.S. government with respect to its important role in world conservation, and other governments. It has advised on: relevant U.S. government programs; the U.S. Africa policy; protected areas enforcement; alternatives to large-scale development projects; marine conservation and protected areas; illegal logging; and the need for increased funding of international protected areas. CCG accounted for 2% of CI's expenses in FY 2004.
• Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB) — CELB "finds innovative ways to engage the private sector in conservation" in relation to their own business activities, focussing on industries with the greatest impact and greatest potential to promote positive change: farming, fishing, energy and mining, forestry, and tourism. CI addresses the issues of climate change and water resources through this program. CELB accounted for 4% of CI's expenses in FY 2004.

• Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) — On the grounds that "supporting local conservation efforts leads to better results, faster", CEPF provides urgent funding to groups that are well positioned to conserve the hotspots, including local communities and private-sector partners. Administered by CI with a consortium of global partners (the Global Environment Facility, the government of Japan, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank).
• Global Conservation Fund (GCF) — A $100-million fund that finances the creation of new protected areas and expansion of existing protected areas, as well as their long-term management.
• Verde Ventures (formly called the Conservation Enterprise Fund) — Provides debt and equity financing to conservation-related businesses engaged in one or more of the following activities: (i) Agroforestry (shade-grown and sustainable agriculture that buffers biologically important protected areas); (ii) Ecotourism; (iii) Wild-harvest products (development and production of oils, nuts, fruit, plants, fibers, or other sustainably harvested natural products). Capitalized by the International Finance Corporation, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Starbucks Coffee Company.

Finally, CI programs include these:

Population-Environment Program — CI began this program in 1998 with financial help from various foundations, USAID, and the Univ. of Michigan Population Fellows Program. It has added reproductive health components to CI's field projects in biodiversity hotspots and wilderness areas in Mexico, Guatemala, and Madagascar, and in 2003, in Belize, the Philippines, and southern Africa. The program provides voluntary family planning and reproductive health care; helps to set up economic enterprises as alternatives to ecosystem destruction; and promotes the economic and educational empowerment of women (which has been shown to be key to population control, among other benefits).
Resource Economics Program — This program conducts "rapid assessments" of socioeconomic conditions in relation to conservation and uses the results to guide its own programs and to make recommendations to governments and other "stakeholders and decision-makers". Such assessments have been done in areas of Brazil and Indonesia and are underway in China, Ecuador and Mexico.
Ecotourism — CI helps local communities establish and manage ecotourism businesses.
Education — CI focusses its education program on "critical publics, such as decision-makers, journalists and teachers". (CI has produced three award-winning videos on conservation issues.)

Some specifics follow, in chronological order.

These are some of the reported accomplishments in financial year 2000-2001 (FY 2001):

• CI was involved in the creation of a 3.3-million-acre park and 340,000-acre conservation concession in Peru, and a 1.77-million-acre protected area in Brazil.
• CI convinced the Cambodian government to ban commercial logging in the Central Cardamom Mountains, home to the Asian elephant and Siamese crocodile.
• CI "catalyzed a pioneering agreement" with 13 ecolodges in Brazil's Pantanal wetland for information sharing and training on biodiversity and business development.
• CI (through CEPF ) provided support for a comprehensive study of Liberia's forests, one of West Africa's last great natural habitats.
• CI (through CABS) conducted a biological survey of Indonesia's Raja Ampat Islands that uncovered one of the planet's richest storehouses of marine biodiversity. CI is now working with communities and local authorities to counter growing threats to the region.
• CI in partnership with Starbucks Coffee Company continued a program to help farmers in Mexico's Chiapas region to earn a premium price for their coffee beans while helping preserve a key part of the Mesoamerica biodiversity hotspot, along with adding five new sites worldwide. CEPF worked with Starbucks to develop sourcing guidelines that integrate social, environmental and economic standards into Starbucks' worldwide coffee purchasing.

Accomplishments in FY 2002:

• CI takes some credit for Mexico's new regulations that restrict bottom trawling by shrimp vessels in the country's Marine Protected Areas. This is considered particularly important for the Gulf of California reserves which are "home to the largest diversity of dolphins and whales on Earth". Fishing stocks and fishermen are expected to benefit as well.
• Fourteen communities in Chiapas, Mexico are being trained in alternatives to slash-and-burn farming techniques.
• A former logging operation in Belize is now the site of a CI-supported ecotourism venture that is "safeguarding 18,000 acres of the biologically rich Golden Stream Corridor Preserve" and providing jobs for 72 local Maya.
• CI, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) jointly supported a debt-for-nature agreement between the governments of Peru and the USA that will enable Peru to spend $10.5 million on conservation activities in more than 27 million acres of Peruvian rainforest over the next 12 years.
• CI/CEPF assembled more than 300 scientists and others to formulate a conservation plan for South Africa's imperiled Succulent Karoo hotspot (containing Earth's highest diversity of succulent flora).
• CI conducted a marine RAP survey off Madagascar's northwestern coast (nine coral and three fish species found were new to science; 304 species of coral were found).
• CI studied (using satellite tracking) elephant migration patterns among five southern African countries to aid in designing a multi-nation conservation area.
• Cambodia established the million-acre Central Cardamoms Protected Forest with support from CI and GCF.
• In another joint effort by CI, TNC and WWF, scientists from around the world were convened to define critical conservation areas in the "Mountains of Southwest China hotspot" (home to the giant panda and the golden monkey).
• CI in Papua New Guinea launched a 5-year initiative to create marine protected areas and resources management plans for local communities in the Milne Bay area, where overharvesting of marine life is degrading coral reefs and mangrove forests. The Global Environment Facility provided funding, along with GCF.
• In the Philippines, CI's input prevented a mining operation in the Sierra Madre Mountains and the reopening of a logging road across the 900,000-acre Northern Sierra Madra Natural Park.
• CI is rallying local communities, using a mobile educational unit, to save the few thousand remaining Sumatran orangutans.
• CEPF distributed more than $11-million in grants to 64 local projects.
• CI launched the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) initiative to "provide accurate, standardized data on species and ecological trends", a "10-year project to create a network of tropical field stations, linking scientists in up to 50 locations".
• CI was instrumental in the creation of a 2,365-acre private reserve on Brazil's Atlantic coast that protects more than half of the remaining endangered northern muriqui monkeys.
• CI's CELB formed a partnership with McDonald's to assess McDonald's food purchases to determine their environmental impact and to develop food sourcing guidelines that support sustainable agriculture and fisheries, and conservation.
• CELB is working with companies to reduce and offset emissions of carbon dioxide caused by fossil fuel burning (one example: forest restoration in Ecuador is helping to offset emissions of Oregon power companies).

Accomplishments in FY 2003:

• CI claims some credit in these developments:
  • Madagascar's president announced a tripling of land devoted to conservation;
  • Indonesia set a goal to protect 20% of its coral reefs over the next 20 years;
  • Almost 10 million acres of new reserves in the Amazon were added by two Brazilian provinces.

• CI convened an international conference called "Defying Ocean's End" that produced an action plan to protect oceans and marine life.

• CELB coordinated an effort by NGOs and the oil and gas industry that produced guildelines to "build biodiversity protection into" oil and gas development projects.

• CI and the IUCN launched a "5-year action strategy" for the 25 most threatened species of turtles and tortoises.

• CI led an effort (that included the Cote D'Ivoire government and others) aimed at "forging consensus" on actions to halt the rapid decline in Chimpanzee populations.

• CI's four regional Centers for Biodiversity Conservation — Tropical Andes, Brazil and the Guianas, Madagascar, and Melanesia — helped secure additional protected areas totalling 19.8 million acres and improved management of 34.6 million acres. CI considers the centers the way of the future for their field work.

• CI was involved in a coalition (that included Brazilian scientists and other conservation groups) that persuaded Brazil's government to restrict or ban exploratory drilling in the highly biodiverse Abrolhos Bank for a year to allow for preparation of a long-term plan for oil exploration and drilling in marine areas.

• CI supported the creation of the 9.56-million-acre Mountains of Tumucumaque National Park in Brazil, brings the total of protected areas in the Brazilian state of Amapá to almost 20 million acres or about 55% of the state. This is part of an overarching effort to establish a 25-million-acre conservation corridor across the Guayana Shield — the largest block of undisturbed tropical forest in the world. The state of Amapá aims to make economic activity within this region compatible with conservation.

• CI and other parties were instrumental in the creation of Peru's Otishi National Park and the Ashaninka and Machiguenga community reserves, which protect 1.7 million acres of the Vilcabamba region at the north end of the 74-million-acre Vilcabamba-Amboró biodiversity conservation corridor, which will link 19 protected areas from central Bolivia to southern Peru. The Vilcabamba region contains the headwaters for four major rivers and the ancestral home of four indigenous groups.

• CI and the Columbian Coffee Federation produced Conservation Guidelines for Coffee Production and CI worked with Starbucks to create a market for the higher-priced "conservation coffee".

• CI launched the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape project to enable collaborative protection of migratory whales, fishes, and sea turtles and other marine life by Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. CI is engaged in a similar initiative in the Caribbean.

• CI formed a partnership with the government of Guinea and Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration company to study Guinea's 63,000-acre Pic de Fon forest reserve, find ways to mitigate and offset Rio Tinto's future iron mining operations there and help local communities to develop economic alternatives to problematic commercial bushmeat hunting, slash-and-burn agriculture and logging.

• One of CI's five "high biodiversity wilderness areas" is in the Congo and here CI is part of a coalition of nations, donor organizations and conservation NGOs that formed the Congo Basin Forest Partnership. Ci was awarded a $6-million USAID grant to support conservation projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea.

• CI's work in the Succulent Karoo biodiversity hotspot in southern Africa involved forging agreement among various "stakeholders" on a conservation plan in advance of an $8-million investment strategy designed to conserve 75% of the hotspot's species while improving community livelihoods.

• CI credits its good working relationship with the Indonesian government with its success in persuading the government of the advantages (particularly watershed protection) of expanding two national parks in the heavily populated island of Java.

• In the Pacific island nation of New Caledonia, CI (with New Zealand's Maruia Trust) worked out an agreement by which Province Nord will co-manage the 12,350-acre Mont Panié Botanical Reserve with communities that have customary rights over the area. Effective management of the reserve is considered central to CI's conservation strategy for the 80,000-acre Mont Panié range.

Accomplishments in FY 2004:

• With funding ($3.5 million) from USAID, CI created a conservation plan targeting Central American "flagship species" such as the jaguar and scarlet macaw.

• In Guyana, where the government has designated the Wai-Wai forest community's 1.5 million acres of traditional lands as a protected area, Ci is developing the Guyana National Protected Areas Trust (with support from the World Bank and German Foreign Investment Bank) to protect the forests from mining and logging.

• In Brazil, CI supported local and state governments as they expanded biodiversity conservation corridors, including a new southern Amazonia corridor that will protect an additional 2 million acres of wilderness.

• CI formed an alliance that will invest $300,000 to support local landowners who want to create private protected areas within the Atlantic Forest Hotspot.

• Brazil's large Cerrado savanna is fast succumbing to industrial-scale agriculture, which threatens a unique biome that has more than 150 mammal and about 837 bird species. CI is working with farmers to promote conservation, and they say that "in response", the central government and state officials are now looking at ways to prevent further damage to the Cerrado.

• CI and other groups negotiated with the Inter-Amercian Development Bank, which is funding the "controversial" Camisea natural gas pipeline, to add 100 new loan conditions aimed at protecting land and people.

• In Columbia, CI and others orchestrated a $10 million debt-for-nature swap that will help protect 11 million acres of tropical forest and freshwater habitat.

• In Botswana, CI has been assessing elephant-human conflicts to develop better management programs. It also helped the indigenous community of Gudigwa develop an ecotourism facility.

• CI met with Liberia's new leader (Gyude Bryant) to discuss future conservation of Liberia's 3.7 million acres of forests using a forest management program developed by the U.S. government with CI support.

• In the post-civil war Democratic Republic of Congo, a new initiative with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, funded by USAID and CI's Global Conservation Fund, will establish a 6.7-million-acre conservation corridor that will help protect eastern lowland gorillas.

• CI is assisting Madagascar with its goal of tripling terrestrial protected areas by 2008.

• CI formed a new partnership with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization to analyze biodiversity and conservation corridors, especially on the island of New Guinea. With other NGOs it is working in its Polynesia-Micronesia Hotspot to improve species protection

• In Cambodia, more than 2 million acres of conservation corridors are being "consolidated by CI and its regional partners", in part to preserve habitat of the Critically Endangered freshwater Siamese crocodile.

• CI assisted in the "bottom-up" (locally driven) creation of 266,760-acre Barang Gadis National Park in the Indonesian island of Sumatra. It also helped establish the similarly sized Peñablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape in the Philippines, which merges with the neighbouring Sierra Madre National Park to form much of the Sierra Madre conservation corridor, which is the largest block of protected forest in the Philippines and home to various threatened species, as well as being an important watershed.

• In southwestern China, CI launched the Tibetan Sacred Lands project to map and study the "pristine" but threatened natural environments and "[revive] traditional Tibetan land-management practices that focus on harmony and sustainability".

• In its newish marine program, CI has undertaken the Global Marine Species Assessment, a major review of the conservation status of marine biomes, including mapping the status of some 20,000 species, including all vertebrates and selected invertebrates and plants. In FY 2004 work focussed on sharks and Indo-Pacific coral reef fish.

• CI "pineered the establishment of seascape-scale management regimes" in Asia's highly biodiverse Coral Triangle and CI is involved in preparatory work for a similar regime for Indonesia's Raja Ampat island group.

• CABS completed a Global Gap Analysis of land vertebrates, finding gaps in the coverage of the global system of protected areas. Its results, published in Nature revealed that more than 1,400 species are without protection including 804 at risk for extinction, and has influenced parties to the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) to expand their protected areas network.

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