Global Trees Campaign

Trees are the cornerstones of many ecosystems; the building blocks on which millions of other plants and animals rely. They stabilise soils, regulate water cycles, provide us with a wealth of products and, of course, store carbon. Trees are quite simply a fundamental part of life.

Yet over 8,000 tree species, 10 per cent of the world’s total, are threatened with extinction. 1,002 species are listed as critically endangered – likely to go extinct unless urgent action is taken now to save them.

The Global Trees Campaign, a joint initiative between Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is the only international campaign dedicated to conserving threatened trees. It exists to secure the future of the world’s threatened tree species and their benefits for humans and the wider environment.

The Global Trees Campaign is the advocate and voice for threatened trees, both catalysing others to take action and directly supporting threatened tree conservation. We work in three ways:

1. Directly supporting threatened tree projects

We provide direct support to a range of projects focusing on the conservation of some of the world’s most threatened tree species.  We currently support 13 projects in eight countries, focusing on a variety of species that reflect the wide array of cultural, economic and ecological values of trees. Threatened trees that we are currently working to conserve include:

• Grandidier’s baobab in Madagascar, an amazing bat pollinated ‘upside down’ tree, used by local people for food, to make rope and even to build houses
• Rare wild apples in the highly threatened fruit and nut forests of Kyrgyzstan
• The Lansan tree of Saint Lucia, which produces a valuable resin used to make incense
• The largest rhododendron species in the world, the remarkable Big Tree rhododendron in China

For a full list of our projects please visit the Global Trees Campaign website

2. Helping others to conserve threatened trees

We actively help local partners around the world to develop projects to take action for their own threatened trees. For example, we may provide training and advice on the best ways to identify and conserve trees or provide ‘tool kits’ that allow local partners and communities to protect trees themselves.

3. Encouraging others to consider threatened trees

A great variety of organisations have the potential to help conserve threatened trees – we aim to help such groups to recognise the value of protecting threatened tree species, and advise them how this could be integrated into their existing activities.

For more information about our work please visit our website www.globaltrees.org , become a fan of Global Trees Campaign page on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

You can also dedicate a tree as a gift at one of our projects, please visit the Tree Gifts page on the Global Trees Campaign website.