I'm one of those people who has plenty and the last thing I want for the holidays is more stuff. Granted there are some items that would be nice to have, but overall I'm lucky to be one that doesn't NEED gifts. So I'm asking family that wants to give me gifts to instead make a donation in my name to a non-profit or charity.

There are a list of organizations I support, but I'm sure there are many more out there that are very deserving that just haven't crossed my radar. So my question to you is: what environmental and conservation organizations do you support?

The British Columbia Wildlife Federation
http://www.bcwf.net/index.php

I've asked for a Duck Stamp from Santa this year. In the United States, it is the first thing you can do annually to ensure a healthy system of national wildlife refuges. (Forgive my ignorance, but is there a similar stamp in Canada?)

Paul Schmitt

I'll be honest, this year I gave very heavily to "people" type charities due to a very rough year for natural disasters. The Japan disasters, the tornados hitting populated areas, and a bad year for flooding all tugged at the heart strings.

Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited are great, sportsman based habitat restoration groups that benefit all wildlife. They help landowners do little things that assist wildlife, as well as larger projects.

I'm glad you posted, though. I've always purchased the State "patron" license, even though the only perk I really use is the state park pass. I think I'll have to look into helping out with my time at Horicon, if they will have me, as well as around the state and local public areas close to home. The budgets are tight and if I can wear out a set of gloves, it may be as good as a financial contribution.

A few of my top faves (and the ones currently listed in my will) are:

The Nature Conservancy - because they buy land/critical habitat and protect it

Earth Island Institute - started by Dave Brower - an umbrella organization that provides support and expertise to new and innovative environmental projects, many of which go on to become independent eNGOs in their own right. Were the driving force behind drastically reducing the kill of dolphins in tuna nets. Brilliant dedicated people.

Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Pacific Wild, two British Columbia groups that conduct cutting edge and non-invasive research into coastal rainforest ecosystems and work to protect wolves, bears, salmon and all the other species there

Wildlife Preservation Trust - Canadian branch of Gerald Durrell's Trust - they work with species that are so critically endangered that captive breeding and reintroduction is their last chance. In Canada, these species include burrowing owls, swift foxes, loggerhead shrikes, Vancouver Island marmots, a variety of turtle species and others. Each year they select as a New Noah a person studying conservation biology, send that person to work with captive breeding experts in the UK and Mauritius and then all that expertise is brought back with the New Noahs to Canada.

Ecojustice Canada – the Canadian equivalent of the Earthjustice in the US. An non-profit environmental law firm that provides pro bono legal services to eNGOs and others wanting to sue government and industry for violating environmental laws. Has won some landmark victories all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society – employs direct action to enforce international treaties on the high seas where no other enforcement happens. Last year their actions in the Southern Ocean prevented the Japanese whaling fleet from even coming close to achieving their self-granted quota. Work with Ecuadorian government to patrol Galapagos waters for shark finners and other poachers. Numerous other marine projects as well to protect everything from bluefin tuna to seals. Some consider them too radical; I do not. They have never harmed a human being during their actions, and they have saved a lot of animal lives. Plus direction action groups like this push the envelope such that industry and government become more likely to negotiate with more moderate groups like Ecojustice Canada where they powers that be at least know the rules.

David Suzuki Foundation – founded by its namesake, a think tank involved in issues ranging from climate change to sustainable fisheries. Great at public outreach.

plus various Humane Societies, wildlife rescue facilities and animal (wild and domestic) welfare organizations.

Roberta Olenick
Vancouver, BC
www.neverspook.com

Mass Audubon (as distinct from national audubon) and Trustees of the Reservation. Yup, I'm a homer.

They are tops on my list as well... and environmental organizations that stuff the pockets of lawyers and file an endless stream of lawsuits are at the bottom.

Buy land. Protect habitat.

I respect your opinion, junctionbutte. But just to clarify, Ecojustice Canada lawyers make far far less income than lawyers in more typical practise. If they were in it for the money, they would work somewhere else.

As well, if I may, let me elaborate on why I strongly support lawsuits as one of the most effective tools environmentalists have.

Without legal action, the environmental laws we have on the books might well remain useless through lack of enforcement and lack of political will. Lawsuits to force adherence to, and set precedents concerning, environmental legislation have resulted in some very pivotal gains for environmental protection. Let me offer a few examples out of many possible ones.

Very recently, Ecojustice sued the Canadian government under the Species At Risk Act for failing to develop a recovery plan for endangered sage grouse as required by the Act. The government claimed they could not develop such a plan because critical habitat for the grouse had not yet been identified. But that is totally bogus because as you and I both know, sage grouse are a lekking species and the location of their leks are in many/most cases very well known (and not that hard to find for anyone who is not deaf as their calls can be heard a fairly long distance). Ecojustice won that case for the grouse - and that win sets a critical precedent that will make it that much harder for the government to weasel out of protecting the next endangered species on the list.

Another example: The reason many municipalities in Canada now have the authority to ban cosmetic use of pesticides (for dandelions, for example), is because Ecojustice took a case defending the legal right of the first municipality to implement such a ban to do so. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where Ecojustice won against two pesticide companies.

Earthjustice has had similar sorts of wins in the US. And typical clients of both Ecojustice Canada and Earthjustice are organizations like (and including) the ones I listed in my previous email. Without such non-profit environmental law firms providing free legal services to them, the goals such organizations promote would be far less effectively reached and at much greater financial cost; because lawsuits are a common and critical strategy in many eNGOs programs. So in supporting Ecojustice, I am effectively supporting each and every one of Ecojustice’s clients (a long list including Sierra Club, CPAWS, Friends of the Earth - basically everything from the Alberta Wilderness Association to Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning).

Lawsuits have arguably been even more pivotal for the environment in the US. Take the tuna-dolphin issue, for a less recent but hopefully instructive example. One prong of Earth Island’s multi-pronged strategy to stop the killing of dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific purse seine fishery involved two carefully planned lawsuits. Prior to these lawsuits, the US tuna fleet was the largest killer of dolphins in the world, destroying literally millions and millions of spinner and spotted dolphins. This destruction was in violation of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act which stipulated that the US fleet was to reduce its dolphin kill over a specified period to numbers approaching zero. Earth Island sued the administration for failing to enforce this provision of the MMPA, and won. The result was, as Earth Island anticipated, that many US vessels avoided enforcement of the law by merely reflagging to other nations and continued killing dolphins at the same rate as before.

That is where the second strategic lawsuit came in. Another provision of the MMPA stated that the US was not allowed to import tuna caught by any nation whose fleet killed more dolphins than the US fleet itself killed. Since the result of Earth Island’s first lawsuit was that US-flagged vessels were killing virtually no dolphins at all anymore, the US administration under law was now required to embargo all nations killing any dolphins and to preclude importation of their tuna to the US market. Earth Island sued the administration for failing to embargo the dolphin-killing nations, and won. Since the US is far and away the very largest market for canned tuna in the world (and that is what the purse seined tuna was caught for, not for fresh consumption), those two lawsuits in combination pretty much closed the major world market for tuna caught at the expense of dolphins.

Seeing the writing on the wall, tuna canneries then started cooperating with Earth Island and asking what they needed to do to gain Earth Island’s approval. As a result, Earth Island established a cannery inspection program and their inspectors gained access to many canneries and trans-shipment records all around the world. Only those that met Earth Island’s extremely stringent dolphin-safe criteria were approved.

Other prongs of Earth Island’s tuna-dolphin project involved a boycott of canned tuna (arguably the single most effective consumer boycott ever launched), extensive media coverage (centered around undercover footage of the dolphin kill obtained by Earth Island staffer Sam LaBudde who got himself a job on a Mexican tuna vessel), developing and promoting successful passage of the Dolphin Consumer Information Act, among other steps. (Unfortunately, George W undermined some of the gains made by relaxing the definition of dolphin-unsafe under the DCIA among other means, but things are nevertheless considerably better than they were before Earth Island’s landmark efforts.)

I am proud to say that I worked for Earth Island on the tuna-dolphin issue for a time and learned a veritable ton about how the world that delivers our numerous products to us works from doing so. And I concluded that at least for myself and the sort of environmental work I ended up being drawn to, I would have been better served by obtaining a degree in law, economics or political science than that Master’s in Zoology/Animal Ecology I have. (But of course, all those great folks at Raincoast and Wildlife Preservation Trust whose work I so admire serve the environment best through their degrees in Conservation Biology.)

By far, my greatest take home lesson from my time with the brilliant and inspiring activists at Earth Islands is this: Just as biological diversity is crucial for ecosystem stability, so is a diversity of strategies and approaches necessary to protect the environment.

This is why the list of the environmental charities I support includes those whose foci range from buying habitat to litigating, from conducting field research to captive breeding, from intercepting whaling fleets to mentoring the next generation of environmental activists.

There are many paths to the top of the mountain of environmental protection. They are all good and they should/must all be taken. So I respect whatever path(s) anyone chooses as their own preferred route(s).

Roberta Olenick
Vancouver, BC
www.neverspook.com

http://www.worldlandtrust-us.org/ - Rainforest conservation throughout the western hemisphere (Some examples: Saving the Esmerelda's Woodstar's habitat in southwestern Ecuador, one of the rarest hummingbirds in the world. Conserving vital habitat in Bolivia for the high endangered Blue-throated Macaw.

http://www.fjocotoco.org/donations.php - Protects critical endangered habitat in Ecuador, named after the now famous newly discovered (several years ago now) Jocotoco Antpitta

http://www.wlt.org/aboutus.asp - Protecting habitat for wildlife in the US

http://www.rspb.org.uk/ - Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Their preserves and habitat conservation was so awesome (in my opinion) when I went over to the UK on business last year that I joined the RSPB even though I was only there less than a week.

Absolutely agree about the RSPB - they are so far ahead of the pack in the way that they involve and enthuses their millions of supporters on the one hand and on the other hand speak to and change the minds of politicians. They are a model for so many charities over here - or they could be.

Otherwise - the Nature Conservancy of Canada (http://www.natureconservancy.ca) for all the reasons mentioned by others. Habitat protection is paramount. Secondly, a small but venerable charity here in Quebec is Bird Protection Quebec (http://www.pqspb.org) who are big in wildlilfe education and also have worked with the Nature Conservancy and given significant amounts of money to them mto help preserve land - they also own several smallbird sanctuaries of their own. There are probably similar organisations in other areas if you look for them and they know their local needs.

By the way - I don't worry too much about charities giving money to lawyers - I know from my work with BPQ that land purchase and preservation involves a lot of legal hoops and you need someone working on your side who understands what needs to be done. Can't avoid it so it's worth paying for the best advice.

Ducks Unlimited
their mission statement:
http://www.ducks.org/about-du?poe=hometxt

Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
http://www.rmef.org/AboutUs/

Pheasants Forever
mission/model
http://www.pheasantsforever.org/page/1/mission.jsp

You forgot the "WTF"

AKA the Wild Turkey Federation

Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

Pheasants Forever

Mule Deer Foundation

Wild Turkey Federation

Trout Unlimited

Ducks Unlimited

Sportsmen of the Black Hills

I've been a longtime supporter of the Nature Conservancy, especially of specific chapters of it that are doing very good work.

Hey Kari

Among a few others,

Alaska Wild

Alaska Conservation Foundation

Stop Pebble Mine

Alaska Center for the Environment

Friends of the Earth

Cheers

Carl

Ducks Unlimited, National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, MN Deer Hunters Association, and many other ones. Although many look at them being "hunting" associations which they are. But all of the habitat improvements and land purchase they do is generally converted to public land and it benefits many other species of wildlife that we all can enjoy whether hunting , photography or just bird watching.

I've supported Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, Defenders of Wildlife, NRDC and their "ilk" for quite a while now. I avoid any hunting associations due to my concern that they may only be concerned about "game yield habitats", but I admit I would need to research more.

I am trending now though to more focused project groups. Save the Tiger (Now Panthera) and other big cat groups, Conservation Lands Foundation, Gorilla Fund and others, LWFF Whopping Crane inroduction project etc. I still give to the big box organizations, but have become concerned about lack of focus. I just try to research more now.