Bezos, DiCaprio Want to Save Some Critters From Extinction

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos' climate efforts are teaming up on a $200 million bet that some of the planet's rarest creatures can bounce back. As Rolling Stone reports, their groups—DiCaprio's Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund—have launched the Phoenix Species Project, which aims to pull 100 species on the verge of extinction back from the brink. Billed in a press release as the "largest single philanthropic initiative dedicated exclusively to the recovery of critically endangered species," the project will fund multi-year recovery work with Indigenous communities, scientists, and conservation groups in 30 countries. Progress reports on population gains and threat reduction will be posted online. DiCaprio says safeguarding these species also protects the crucial ecosystems they anchor, from forests and wetlands to oceans.

The targeted "Phoenix 100" spans mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and plants. They include, per the AP:

• The golden-crowned sifaka, a lemur from Madagascar.
• The Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, a lungless tree-dweller that lives 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.
• The pink land iguana, found only on Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos Islands.
• 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, known and named for its black-and-white evening sky appearance, found only in the mountains of Colombia.
• Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, a monotreme, or mammal that lays eggs, from New Guinea is named in honor of the 100-year-old naturalist David Attenborough.

The project's goals include giving long-term sustenance to successful but smaller efforts, notes the AP. "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, which is getting a grant from the initiative. "This funding, this global platform, and technical support change what is possible."