In partnership with forest communities, Wildlife Works’ conservation projects provide safe havens for endangered species while creating local jobs and reducing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually through the voluntary carbon market place.

Wildlife Works is the world’s leading REDD+ program development and management company with an effective approach to applying innovative market based solutions to the conservation of biodiversity.
Over its 20 year history, Wildlife Works established a successful model that uses the emerging marketplace for REDD+ Carbon Offsets to protect threatened forests, wildlife, and communities.

REDD+ allows local landowners in the developing world monetise their forest and biodiversity assets whether they are governments, communities, ownership groups, or private individuals.

Along the coast of Kilifi county in Kenya, LEAF are planting trees to restore mangrove forests. The project involves planting over 7000 mangrove seedlings, restoring 7 ha of forest. The restored site will provide a wide range of benefits for biodiversity, carbon sequestration and local people.

Mangrove forests are critically important habitats providing a wide array of services to both local communities and the global population. Mangroves help support a large number of aquatic animals as their roots provide important breeding grounds for fish. This diversity helps support rich fisheries that provide a valuable source of income and protein to the coastal communities. Mangroves also help to remove pollutants and heavy metals from the coastal waters, ensuring a supply of clean water. Meanwhile mangroves help to fight climate change by capturing large quantities of carbon in both the trees themselves and in the soil. Meanwhile mangroves play a critical role in mitigating the impacts of climate change on coastal communities as they provide the first line of defence against extreme weather events, such as storm surges, floods and hurricanes.

In spite of this multitude of benefits, mangrove forests are being decimated across the planet. Vast numbers of mangrove trees are being cut down for fuelwood and land is being cleared to make space for aquaculture. Whilst these provide short-term economic gains to the locals, many of their long-term benefits that mangroves provide are lost. Locals lose a key source of income, protein and become increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.