World Land Trust – Who They Are and Why We Support Them
For every sale of our vegan butter alternative Veurre®, The Hemp Pantry donates 10p to the World Land Trust.
Read on to find out more about this conservation charity, the work they do around the world and why we support them.
World Land Trust
An international conservation charity, the World Land Trust helps to protect the world’s most biologically important and threatened habitats.
Founded in 1989, the charity has funded partner organisations worldwide to give permanent protection to habitats and wildlife, for example by creating reserves or wildlife ‘corridors’.
The charity pioneered the Buy an Acre concept of buying land for conservation, and, to date, it has helped to purchase and protect more than 770,000 acres of threatened habitat in 20 countries, including the UK. Along with local programme partners, World Land Trust has four million acres of land across the world managed under active protection.
Patrons include natural history filmmaker Sir David Attenborough, TV presenter and wildlife expert Chris Packham, wildlife presenter and adventurer Steve Backshall and English cricketer David Gower.
Buy an Acre
Initially founded to raise funds to purchase acres of threatened tropical rainforest in Belize, World Land Trust was the first organisation to use land purchase as its primary objective to raise funds for conservation.
Donors save real acres of threatened land, enabling wildlife reserves to be set up and managed by local partner organisations.
Where land is too expensive to purchase, the World Land Trust buys strategic pieces of land to set up corridors between fragmented reserves, allowing the safe roaming of wildlife and decreasing human-animal conflict.
Local Programme Partners
The charity works with local people and organisations to operate and protect the reserves once the land has been secured. It does not own or manage any of the areas it helps save outside of the UK. The land is always purchased, protected and managed by local partner organisations or communities.
There are on-going threats to manage, such as illegal hunting and deforestation, as well as running education programmes that help to raise environmental awareness in nearby communities.
Empowering on-the ground organisations is more effective than running the reserves out of the UK. The partners have specialist expertise and local knowledge and employ people from nearby communities, for example as rangers.
Other Activity and Programmes
World Land Trust is also active in influencing governments, with successful initiatives in Borneo and Paraguay.
The charity works to tackle climate change, developing the Carbon Balanced Programme to encourage individuals and businesses to offset their unavoidable carbon emissions.
It also runs reforestation projects in forest landscapes that have been severely fragmented by human actions.
Species Conservation
By protecting threatened habitat, World Land Trust helps to save endangered plants and animals. Each habitat is home to a huge number of species, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates.
Within its reserves, it has helped mammals including the Bengal Tiger, Indian Leopard, Spectacled Bear and African Elephant. Birds including the Andean Condor, King Vulture and Magellanic Penguin; and amphibians such as the Bell’s False Brook Salamander and the Black-Eyed Leaf Frog.
Why We Support World Land Trust
The Hemp Pantry founder, Matthew Atkins, chose this international conservation charity because its patron Sir David Attenborough is a “legend. He is an inspiration, so active and passionate about campaigning for a greener planet.”
Matthew explained, “I met with the directors of the charity and felt instantly that this was the one I wanted The Hemp Pantry to support. They were so encouraging about the business, and how I was actively using more hemp in food products.
“I’m delighted to be able to support World Land Trust and the incredibly important work they do around the world.”
How We Support the Charity
Ten pence from every sale of Veurre®, our plant-based organic butter alternative, is donated to World Land Trust.
We’ll continually look for ways to support the charity as new products and ranges are launched.
Click here for more information on Veurre®.