Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Bezos commit $200 million to save endangered species

LOS ANGELES - Foundations founded and co-founded by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jeff Bezos have launched an initiative committed to investing $200 million to help save 100 of the world's most threatened species.

This marks what the organizers describe as the largest single fund ever dedicated solely to recovering critically endangered species.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeff Bezos commit $200 miillion to save species

Big picture view:

The Phoenix Species Project, unveiled Tuesday, is being led by Re:wild, co-founded by DiCaprio, and the Bezos Earth Fund. The initiative aims to provide long-term support for critically endangered wildlife facing growing threats from habitat loss and climate change.

Among the species set to benefit from the initiative are the Visayan warty pig of the Philippines, the Cozumel harvest mouse from Mexico, the pink land iguana found only in Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, the Malayan (Sunda) pangolin, Tanzania's pancake tortoise, Colombia's starry night harlequin toad, and Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal native to New Guinea.

What they're saying:

Organizers say the funding is intended to strengthen promising conservation programs that often struggle with limited financial resources, allowing them to expand their impact over the long term.

"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," Tiana Andriamanana, executive director of Association Fanamby, one of the groups getting a grant from the initiative, said in a statement. "This funding, this global platform and technical support change what is possible."

DiCaprio advocates for protecting species amid climate change

The backstory:

The "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" actor has been an outspoken advocate for the environment and efforts to protect species, using social media to warn of the consequences of climate change.

That vision gained momentum in 2021 when he and Re:wild CEO and co-founder Wes Sechrest met with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who serve as chair and vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund.

The discussions sparked broader consultations involving governments, conservation organizations and Indigenous communities to identify the most effective strategies for reversing biodiversity loss. Those talks ultimately evolved into the Phoenix Species Project.

RELATED: Leonardo DiCaprio-backed fund pledges $5M in aid for Amazon wildfires

In 2019, Earth Alliance, an organization DiCaprio created with Laurene Powell Jobs and Brian Sheth, formed an emergency Amazon Forest Fund.

DiCaprio joined with the philanthropists in pledging $5 million through their environmental foundation to aid the Amazon as massive wildfires burned across the region.

In addition to its $5 million pledge, the alliance also was seeking donations to help repair the Brazilian rainforest, which activists have called the "lungs of the planet."

Dig deeper:

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species now lists 49,500 species threatened with extinction. That is 28% of all accessed species. Nearly 176,000 species were accessed this year.