Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
Disney’s new live-action film The Lion King will undoubtedly be a box office smash, but it will also mark the company’s largest public commitment to conservation by supporting a global campaign to raise awareness of the plight of lions called “Protect the Pride.” The campaign is supporting the Lion Recovery Fund, a collaboration between The Wildlife Conservation Network and the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation, that is aiming to double the number of lions in the wild in Africa by the year 2050.
Why This Matters: No one can capture the hearts and minds of the public like Disney and its stars. Just watch the video above. This film will be seen by billions of people around the globe and hopefully so will this campaign. The money raised will dramatically increase funding available for wild lion conservation in Africa, and the habitat conserved will also contribute to the protection of other species. So “Circle of Life”-it out the wazoo, Zazu! We Can Feel the Love for lions already. We Just Can’t Wait to see the King of the jungle’s population double. We will hope for Hakuna Matata after 2050. Until then, Be Prepared for poachers, big game hunters, and developers of all sorts to continue to threaten the pride.
A New Type of Conservation Advocacy.
Only 3% of the $410 billion donated to charities in the U.S. went to environment and animal organizations in 2018. That number is not consistent with public attitudes placing great importance on these issues and related causes. The Wall Street Journal magazine recently explained that partnerships like the one between Disney and WCN, matching the power of celebrities and conservation causes, is a new model — one that hopefully will appeal to young donors. According to The Journal, at the “forefront of the shift are organizations like the Bay Area–based WCN, which supports local groups in 35 sub-Saharan countries. Others include WildAid, which battles wildlife poaching and trafficking, and the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which rescues and rehabilitates orphaned elephants and rhinos.”
Their model is simple. Instead of direct mailers and stuffed-animal sales, use “attention-grabbing social-media campaigns and brand partnerships,” to increase the charitable dollars going to wildlife and conservation causes.
A wildly successful example is the #KnotOnMyPlanet campaign to save elephants undertaken by WCN and Tiffany’s, which yielded 1.5 billion media impressions in the first week. Tiffany’s then debuted a collection featuring tiny silver and rose-gold elephant charms, named Save the Wild, which has raised $5 million for WCN since 2017.
Similar product tie-ins have also been wildly successful for wildlife and for companies — for example, two editions of Lacoste’s Save Our Species polo shirts, in which they substituted one of 10 threatened species for their iconic alligator, sold out in under 24 hours and all proceeds went to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
By Ashira Morris, ODP Staff Writer Almost 1,000 of Florida’s manatees have died as of Oct.1 this year, setting a tragic record for the most deaths in a year, with two months left to go. Deaths were largely caused by starvation — the predator-less sea cows typically spend hours a day eating seagrass, but declining […]
Do you have a good eye? Are you surprisingly good at Where’s Waldo and like Walruses? If so, we have great opportunity for you! The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is seeking volunteers to help count Atlantic walruses…from space. Sea ice is retreating fast as global temperatures rise, forcing walruses to crowd on smaller floes […]
By Natasha Lasky, ODP Staff Writer At a UN conference in Kunming, China, President Xi Jinping set aside $230 million to form a fund that preserves biodiversity in developing countries. This announcement was made at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity talks (COP15) which are dedicated to preserving delicate ecosystems and preventing plants and animals […]
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.