See How We Put Your Donation to Work
For nearly 40 years, our donors have been the bedrock of our success. Your investment doesn’t just fund a nonprofit; it empowers local people to become self-sufficient stewards of their own natural resources. Together with your vital investment, we have achieved:
- 4.44 Million+ Acres Protected: You’ve secured critical habitats across four continents, protecting vital ecosystems for the world’s most vulnerable species.
- 49 Endangered Species Protected: You’ve safeguarded 22 primate species and 27 other threatened or endangered animals, ensuring wildlife like tigers, primates, and sea turtles have a permanent home.
- 30+ Projects Catalyzed: You’ve fueled community-led initiatives in 18 countries since 1989, proving that local leadership is the ultimate key to global conservation goals.
- 92 Local Alliances Formed: You’ve empowered 57 local community groups to lead their own conservation and facilitated the creation of 35 dedicated protected areas.
- A Legacy of Leadership: You’ve trained hundreds of practitioners, researchers, and students through specialized workshops, scaling this cost-effective, grassroots model worldwide for generations to come.
How Your Support Becomes Reality
When you give, you aren’t just donating—you are providing the essential tools a community needs to transition from initial interest to independent self-management. Your support drives impact across five reinforcing categories:
- Direct Action: You put “boots on the ground,” funding conservation in action, the community management and governance that protects and restores habitats and wildlife.
- Knowledge: You fund the research, like camera trapping, that allows communities to understand the status of their local wildlife.
- Awareness: You help build local pride and advocacy, turning neighbors into life-long conservationists.
- Capacity-Building: You provide the technical training—from GPS use to scientific monitoring—that empowers local leaders.
- Policy: You support the legal work required to secure land rights and official government recognition for local stewardship.
Your Support in Action: Two Stories of Recovery
Belize
In Belize, the endangered black howler monkey was losing its habitat to rapid agricultural clearing in the 1980s, and traditional top-down regulations could not stop the encroachment. Then, donors like you helped establish the Community Baboon Sanctuary, uniting more than 100 private landowners across seven rural villages to voluntarily protect the riparian habitat along the Belize River . Because of this community-led action, the howler monkey population quickly rebounded into the thousands, creating a self-sustaining eco-tourism model that has successfully protected the howlers’ habitat for over four decades.
Assam, India
In Assam, India, the endangered golden langur was facing extinction as its forest home was fragmented in the 1990s. Traditional top-down methods were failing to stop the decline. Then donors like you helped us form a network of over 100 villages that gained the legal right to manage their own forests. Because of this community-led action, there has been a five-fold population increase for the langurs, and the Manas Biosphere was removed from UNESCO’s “in danger” list in 2011.
Hear what our partners say:
We have worked closely with Community Conservation since 2008. CC knows very well the true meaning of community conservation. One of the key lessons that we have learnt is that communities across the globe share many things, both in opportunities and difficulties, and that just seeing that they form part of a much larger network often provides the additional push.
When CBBM was established in 2022, Community Conservation did something that very few funders are willing to do: provide unrestricted core support. Because of this investment, CBBM has grown from an idea into a recognized conservation organization with real impact on the ground. If you support Community Conservation, thank you. You are helping local and Indigenous communities in Cameroon protect gorillas, chimpanzees, and the forests they call home. The work is not finished. The future we are working toward is still ahead of us. With your continued support, we will keep building it.