Rainforest Trust

08/20/2026

The risk and damage of fires are spreading worldwide, and even humid rainforests and water-dominant landscapes like wetlands are feeling the heat.

Just two years ago, record-breaking fires burned more than 8 million acres across the Amazon rainforest. 🌳🔥

Deforestation intensifies the impacts of fire, making protection a key tool for preserving rainforests as fire risks grow.

In a fragmented or degraded rainforest, fires can rapidly burn out of control. The consequences can be devastating, said Ameyali Ramos, Rainforest Trust’s Latin America Regional Director. “It’s like a trauma, and recovery can take decades.”

We need your help to build resilience against future fires in the Amazon.

Our Brazilian Amazon Fund will direct your donation to protect the world’s largest rainforest from:

🔥 Slash-and-burn practices to clear land
🌾 Deforestation for agriculture and ranching
🌍 Forest loss that releases stored carbon
⛏️ Mining that pollutes and degrades the landscape
🐒 Habitat destruction in a global biodiversity hotspot

This year’s fire season is already destroying forests in Europe and North America, and the warm air of a powerful El Niño is headed toward South America.

With a gift to our Brazilian Amazon Fund, you can help us take urgent action to protect the rainforest now while preparing for fire risks in the future, before it’s too late.💔

Link in comments to donate now!

08/14/2026

We are honored to share our latest Partner Blog, written by Carolina Proaño-Castro, Executive Director of Fundación Futuro!

A study of nearly one million specimens confirmed that more than 96% of the insect species found in the Mashpi-Tayra Reserve have not been found anywhere else in the world.

Read the full story to learn more about Fundación Futuro’s conservation work! 👇

A Rainforest Trust Partner Blog by Carolina Proaño-Castro, Executive Director of Fundación Futuro

08/09/2026

Many of the rainforests standing today owe their survival to Indigenous stewardship. Yet Indigenous Peoples and their lands have faced a legacy of destructive development, exploitation, and deforestation. 🌿🌎

When the world loses rainforests, it loses biodiversity and climate stability.

When people lose rainforests, they lose their homes, foods, medicines, traditions, and cultures. Sometimes they lose their lives.

On the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and every day, we recognize the Earth’s traditional stewards and today’s defenders of the rainforests that benefit us all.

Read our new Substack article: Why We Support Indigenous-led Conservation

Many of our local partners work closely with Indigenous Peoples around the world to help secure their land tenure and management rights while conserving key habitats for biodiversity. Our new Substack article features the insight and expertise of some of these partners.

Learn how Indigenous knowledge has sustained people and nature together for generations and how modern conservation is applying traditional practices for greater impact.

Link in comments to read the article! 🔗

08/01/2026

Our donors helped make conservation history! 🌊🌎

Together, we supported the creation of the first-ever Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the Central African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. 🇸🇹

These two new designations will provide safe harbor for threatened species, and six more MPAs are pending.

The shores of São Tomé and Príncipe host critical nesting sites for five sea turtle species struggling to survive:

🐢 Critically Endangered Hawksbill Turtles

🐢 Vulnerable Olive Ridley, Leatherback, and Loggerhead Turtles

🐢 Green Turtles

Protected habitats will also include 600 acres of mangrove forest and migratory routes of threatened species like the Critically Endangered Scalloped Hammerhead shark.

In partnership with Fauna & Flora International, we supported the designation of two MPAs that cover 15,617 acres.

Six more MPA designations are expected to ensure a total of 21,505 acres will be safe from destructive fishing practices, overfishing, and habitat degradation.

Communities will co-manage the MPAs to align conservation with local livelihoods and wellbeing.

“I’ve lived near the coast my entire life, and I’ve never seen the sea under so much pressure…. It’s more important than ever to step up and save our ocean.” -Pedro Ramos, Project Officer for Fauna & Flora International, in the Tanzania Times.

Our incredible donors played an important part in this milestone achievement. Your support makes conservation possible, and we are deeply grateful! 💙

07/31/2026

The Boma–Badingilo migratory landscape in South Sudan, where we are helping connect protected areas across 9.4 million acres, just became South Sudan’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This milestone celebrates the global importance of one of Africa’s last great wilderness areas! 🌍

Spanning nearly 30 million acres of savannas, wetlands, floodplains, and woodlands, this extraordinary landscape protects one of the greatest wildlife migrations on Earth.

More than 6 million antelope, including White-eared Kob, Tiang, and Mongalla Gazelle, move across this ancient migration route each year!

The Boma-Badingilo landscape remains largely intact, but it needs urgent protection.

Poaching, wildlife trafficking, climate change, and unsustainable development put this incredible ecosystem and its wildlife at risk.

World Heritage status provides an important international framework for strengthening protection and attracting the technical and financial support needed to secure the landscape’s future.

Its long-term survival will depend on continued cooperation among the Government of South Sudan, local and Indigenous communities, traditional authorities, and conservation partners.

Rainforest Trust is honored to be a partner in this effort!

07/28/2026

Happy World Nature Conservation Day! 🌍🌿

On tropical coasts, treasure lies beneath the waves. “Blue carbon” ecosystems like mangrove forests absorb 10 times more carbon than tropical forests, and they store it in their soils for millennia. 🌊

When coastal ecosystems are destroyed, blue carbon escapes from the ocean to the atmosphere. Marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses cover only 2 to 6% of our planet, yet they release up to 19% of the emissions from deforestation.

On World Nature Conservation Day, you can double your impact to protect carbon-rich tropical ecosystems!

Our donors have helped secure blue carbon vaults around the tropics:

🌴 Mangrove forests on Brazil’s Atlantic coast: With Rare Brazil, we conserved over 188,000 acres of habitat for manatees and migrating birds.

🐢 Seagrass meadows in Guinea-Bissau: With PRCM, we are supporting Marine Protected Areas across 330,000 acres that shelter nurseries for endangered sea turtles.

🐆 Marshes and flooded grasslands in the Pantanal: With Onçafari, we are protecting 326,000 acres in the world’s largest tropical wetland, which hosts the greatest density of Jaguars worldwide.

Together, these projects store the CO2 equivalent of annual electricity use in 23 million U.S. homes. And this is only a fraction of the 19 billion tons of carbon our donors have helped secure around the world. 🌎

Coastal development continues to release blue carbon vaults. To address the global climate crisis, we must permanently protect blue carbon and keep it locked away.

Don’t miss your chance to double your impact!

Every donation to our Rainforest Climate Action Fund will be matched until we reach our $1,000,000 goal!

Link in comments to donate 💚

07/26/2026

It’s World Mangrove Day! 💚

Mangroves play a vital role in the health of our planet, its wildlife, and all people. As a “blue carbon” solution, they are pivotal to slowing the global climate crisis.

Mangrove forests capture carbon at 10 times the rate of rainforests, and they store it for millennia. They also face significant and growing threats from aquaculture, agriculture, coastal development, and other exploitation.

On World Mangrove Day, help us protect the mangrove forests of the Coral Triangle.🐠🌏

Your gift to Rainforest Trust will support our partner, Konservasi Indonesia, in working with the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries and local governments to create two Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) totaling 834,440 acres.

Along with the existing network of MPAs in the southern half of the Coral Triangle, this protection will safeguard:

💙 Mangroves and seagrass beds that store vast amounts of blue carbon

🪸 478 species of reef-building coral

🐢 Migratory megafauna such as sea turtles, sharks, rays, whales, and dolphins

🎣 Local fishing livelihoods

We are so close to reaching our goal to help protect this vital sanctuary in the Coral Triangle, its remarkable biodiversity, and its carbon-rich mangrove forests.

Your gift on can take us past the finish line and make an incredible impact for wildlife, people, and the planet.

Don’t miss your chance to help us reach our goal.

Link in comments to donate today for this critical project!

07/23/2026

We’re proud to share that our CEO, James Deutsch, is featured in a powerful new op-ed on Madagascar in allAfrica.com!

Co-authored with Liva Raharijaona, 30x30 Coordinator at Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the piece highlights a pivotal moment for conservation.

Madagascar is home to over 150,000 species found nowhere else on Earth, yet its ecosystems face growing pressure. With a renewed national commitment to 30x30, Madagascar aims to show the world how conservation can protect natural heritage while improving the lives of people who depend on it.

Now, what’s needed is partnerships at the scale of this opportunity.

Read the full op-ed:

Guest Column - Has a chance to lead the world in conservation, and species protection, and we must not waste It.

07/22/2026

Next year may be the hottest year ever recorded. Global temperatures continue to rise, and a powerful El Niño is strengthening in the Pacific Ocean. 🔥🌍

That translates to an intense fire season for rainforests and other tropical landscapes across South America.

In our new Substack article, learn how we are supporting our local partners in building coalitions, equipping firefighters, and raising awareness to protect habitats and homes when disaster strikes.

Tropical places like the Amazon rainforest and the wetlands of the Pantanal have weathered the effects of El Niño for millennia. But deforestation, environmental degradation, and human-caused climate change have created a century’s worth of kindling.

“The risk of large, severe fires has been increasing across much of the tropical region,” said Dr. Ameyali Ramos, Latin America Conservation Director for Rainforest Trust. “But there are also seasons that are a lot more worrying, and I think that the fire season starting in 2027 is going to be one of those.”

Link in comments to read the article!