selected Recent Grants
Below is a sampling of programs that the Foundation has supported in recent years. This list does not include all of the Foundation’s current or historic grants.
Asia
Wildlife Conservation Society
Thailand and Indonesia
LCAOF has had a long-term commitment to the Western Forest Complex in Thailand, one of the largest and most intact forests remaining in Southeast Asia. Efforts in this region include strengthening the SMART patrol systems, maintaining tiger population monitoring, and promoting nature education campaigns in local schools.
In Indonesia’s Sumatra, the Leuser Ecosystem is the last remaining intact rainforest in the world that has viable populations of Sumatran rhino, orangutan, tiger, and elephant in the same geographic area. LCAOF supports work to advance a collaborative effort to protect the ecosystem and its wildlife and support the communities that depend on it. The work is carried out in deep partnership with local organizations.
The Foundation is also making exploratory grants to locally-embedded organizations in Borneo.
Sub Saharan Africa
Conservation Justice
Gabon
Even as poaching pressures have declined in some countries, the threat remains high in certain Central African countries. This grant supports investigation of the illegal wildlife trade and support for apprehension and prosecution of wildlife traffickers in Gabon.
Fauna & Flora International
Chuilexi Conservancy, Mozambique
The Chuilexi Conservancy within the Niassa Special Reserve provides a safe haven for globally significant African wildlife. We support FFI’s efforts to establish and implement a species and ecosystem monitoring program and align and optimize wildlife and ecosystem monitoring with law enforcement to prevent elephant and other wildlife poaching.
Maliasili Initiatives
Kenya, Tanzania, KAZA and Madagascar
Maliasili leads a pooled funding effort to accelerate community-led conservation solutions in three key regions in Africa: the savannah rangelands of southern Kenya/northern Tanzania, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), and Madagascar. LCAOF’s grant supports a portfolio of African conservation organizations aimed at increasing their impact, coordinating and scaling work across the landscape, and improving long-term organizational capacity and leadership.
Southern Rift Association of Landowners
Kenya
Responding directly to the threat of rapidly changing land tenure in Kenya’s Southern Rift rangelands, SORALO focuses on maintaining healthy rangelands, coexistence strategies between people and wildlife, local livelihoods, and maintaining Maasai culture.
Ujamaa Community Resource Team
Tanzania
The Ujamaa Community Resource Team seeks to improve the lives of pastoralist, agro-pastoralist, and hunter-gatherer communities in northern Tanzania by empowering them to sustainably manage and benefit from the natural resources on which their livelihoods depend. The Foundation supports their work to strengthen land tenure by helping communities obtain Certificates of Village Land and Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy.
Honeyguide Foundation
Tanzania
Honeyguide supports communities and Wildlife Management Areas in Northern Tanzania, working across five program areas—enterprise development, management & governance, communications, human-wildlife conflict prevention, and wildlife & habitat protection—to advance sustainable practices in local conservation.
Niassa Carnivore Project
Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique
The Niassa Special Reserve covering 4.2 million hectares is the largest protected area in Mozambique, and the third largest in Africa. In 2012, it was divided into 17 discrete land areas, known as concessions, to manage the reserve and create opportunities for public-private management partnerships. The Niassa Lion Coalition aims to reduce threats to carnivores, support household-level alternative livelihoods, develop environmental education and outreach programs, and establish community partnership agreements to manage concessions in the Reserve.
PAMS Foundation
Ruvuma Landscape, Tanzania
PAMS works in one of Africa’s largest but most challenging wilderness regions, southern Tanzania’s Selous-Niassa transboundary landscape. Efforts focus primarily on working with local communities to encourage active support for wildlife and cooperation with anti-poaching efforts that destabilize the area and undermine local livelihoods.
LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
Re:wild
Maya Forest Corridor, Belize
This grant provides support to secure large parcels of key jaguar habitat in Central America. The Maya Forest Corridor, which is under intense threat of agricultural conversion, is the last remaining viable jaguar corridor in the Selva Maya. The Selva Maya is the largest remaining contiguous forest in Central America. LCAOF has also provided a major PRI loan to Re:wild towards purchasing key parcels of land for the corridor.
Rewilding Argentina
Iberá Park, Northern Argentina
LCAOF supports Rewilding Argentina’s work with gateway communities and Indigenous Guarini people living around Iberá Park, one of the most important freshwater systems in South America. This project focuses on developing a local regenerative economy connected to Rewilding Argentina’s efforts to return key species, such as the jaguar and giant otter, to the wetlands.
Wildlife Conservation Society
Selva Maya Landscape, Guatemala & Belize
The Selva Maya is Mesoamerica’s most extensive tropical forest and is a stronghold for jaguar as well as several endangered species, such as white-lipped peccary, scarlet macaw, and Central American spider monkey. LCAOF supports WCS Guatemala and WCS Belize in protecting the larger Selva Maya landscape from fire and encroaching development and supporting local communities in on-the-ground conservation efforts.
Madagascar
Missouri Botanical Garden
Vohidava-Betsimilaho New Protected Area, Southern Madagascar
The Mandrare River Valley supports pristine spiny thicket and gallery forest and is home to an extraordinary diversity of threatened flora and fauna but is also threatened by lack of government oversight and deep poverty. The project is designed to support local people to protect and sustainably manage their community lands for the benefit of both themselves and the native endemic species.
The Peregrine Fund
Bemanevika and Mahimborondro Protected Areas, Northern Madagascar
The Peregrine Fund Madagascar has worked for years to develop and implement Protected Area management plans, engage local communities in conservation action, and conduct scientific research to inform management development. These actions have led to better protections in several key biodiversity regions across Madagascar. This project supports these efforts at two Protected Areas in northern Madagascar, with considerations for expansion into other areas.
University of Antananarivo School of Agronomy
Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Southwest Madagascar
One of the Foundation’s longest-running programs, this Reserve is a leader in working with local communities to protect highly threatened natural forests and endemic wildlife species while supporting sustainable livelihoods. Research and lessons learned here are now being applied more broadly to inform conservation more broadly across the arid southwestern part of Madagascar.
Wildlife Conservation Society
MaMaBay Landscape, Northeast Madagascar
This project focuses on preventing forest loss and unsustainable resource use through community conservation incentives. This region is home to Madagascar’s largest tract of pristine rainforest and more than half of its species, including 22 endemic lemur species.
Transboundary Rockies
The Rocky Mountains along the U.S.-Canadian border support the most intact native plant and animal communities in North America. For many years, LCAOF has supported a core group of NGOs, primarily based in Montana. These grants cover a wide range of activities including wilderness advocacy, watershed protection, forest planning, community-engagement, land conservation, and environmental education. Here is a sample of the organizations we currently fund in the North American Rockies:
Community-based Conservation: The Foundation supports selected community-based groups including the Clark Fork Coalition, Great Burn Conservation Alliance and Swan Valley Connections. These NGOS engage local citizens to restore and improve wildlife habitat, collaborate with forest stakeholders, and educate policy makers and local people about the sustainable use of natural resources.
Public & Private Land Protection: LCAOF supports the designation and responsible management of public lands and wilderness areas that support both wildlife, recreation and a growing economy. We support Wild Montana, The Wilderness Society and other NGOs to bring good science and citizen input to the discussions about the importance of public lands in this region. Since 2021, LCAOF supports the Heart of the Rockies Keep it Connected Initiative, a network of local land trusts that work together to increase the pace of private land conservation in the region. LCAOF recently provided almost $1 million to support the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s efforts to eliminate the threat of a gold mine on the boundary of Yellowstone National Park.
Civic Engagement: 82% of Montana citizens consider themselves ‘conservationists’, a testament to the value they place on the region’s open lands, clean water and abundant wildlife. We help grassroots organizations like the Northern Plains Resource Council and Montana Voices identify and engage local people to make sure their views are fully considered as policies are debated that affect the region’s lands, waters and natural resources.
Wildlife Connectivity: Maintaining the ability of wildlife species, from elk herds to grizzly bears and wolverines, to move across the landscape is key to their long-term survival. The Foundation supports University researchers to identify the most important wildlife corridors between public lands on both sides of the US-Canada border. We have supported the National Wildlife Federation to retire marginal grazing leases and land trusts to secure easements on key parcels of particular importance to wildlife.
Tribal Partnerships: LCAOF is supporting indigenous-led conservation planning work in partnership with the Blackfeet Nation. With support from selected NGO partners, the Blackfeet are advancing land conservation and planning work and laying the groundwork to reestablish a free-roaming buffalo herd in the Transboundary Rockies region. Partner NGOs include INDIGENOUS-LED, The Nature Conservancy and Yellowstone to Yukon. Since 2023, LCAOF also supports the MakeWay Foundation’s Indigenous-led conservation efforts in Canada.