DiCaprio, Bezos Foundations Put $200M Into Saving 100 Species

LOS ANGELES — Foundations funded and co-founded by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos have committed $200 million to reviving 100 of the world's most threatened species, including endangered lemurs, salamanders, pangolins, pigs and echidnas.

DiCaprio's Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund are leading the effort, called the Phoenix Species Project, the groups announced Tuesday. They describe it as the largest single fund in history dedicated exclusively to recovering critically endangered species.

DiCaprio has spent years developing the idea of a major concerted effort for species whose habitats and future existence are threatened by climate change. In 2021, he and Re:wild co-founder Wes Sechrest, a biologist who serves as the organization's chief executive, met with Bezos, the Amazon founder, and his wife, former television news reporter and host Lauren Sánchez Bezos. Bezos serves as chair of the Bezos Earth Fund and Sánchez Bezos as vice chair.

That meeting led to a series of conversations with local governments, environmental groups and Indigenous people about how best to reverse the decline of their most vulnerable species. Those talks eventually produced the Phoenix Species Project.

Among the animals the initiative is seeking to sustain are the golden-crowned sifaka, a lemur from Madagascar; the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, a lungless tree-dweller found only in a small canyon in North Carolina; the Visayan warty pig, endemic to islands in the Philippines; Mexico's Cozumel harvest mouse, which lives only on an island off the Yucatán Peninsula; and the pink land iguana, found only on Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos Islands.

The list also includes the Malayan pangolin, also known as the Sunda pangolin, native to Southeast Asia; Tanzania's pancake tortoise, named for its flat, flexible shell; the starry night harlequin toad, found only in the mountains of Colombia; and Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal from New Guinea named in honor of the 100-year-old naturalist David Attenborough.

One stated goal is to give lasting support to smaller conservation efforts that have succeeded but proved short-lived.

"We've protected the golden-crowned sifaka for years on a budget that would never match what this species deserves, but letting it go extinct was never an option," said Tiana Andriamanana, executive director of Association Fanamby, one of the groups receiving a grant. "This funding, this global platform and technical support change what is possible."