Latin America and the Caribbean:Who We Are

If you could walk it, you'd understand the incredible natural diversity of WWF's Latin America and Caribbean region (LA/C). Step after step--from northern Mexico to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, then north up the east coast to Venezuela and the southernmost islands of the Caribbean--you'd see some of nature's greatest wonders. You'd feel the delicate elegance of the region's natural balance, the incredible web of life that makes it one of the most special places on earth.

And you'd feel it strongest in the strangest places: the smoggy urban sprawl of Sao Paulo and Mexico City; the shrinking acres of the rainforest, where losses are measured by the second; the endangered forests of the Andes. In these places and too much of the LA/C, you're afforded the dead-on vision of hindsight, as pollution, industry, agricultural expansion, and urban growth increasingly threaten much of the region's natural wonder.

That's why since 1962 WWF has supported more than a thousand conservation initiatives in over 30 Latin American/Caribbean (LA/C) countries. Today, with an annual budget approaching $20 million (U.S.), the program helps sustain about 200 ongoing projects that contain a large portion of the region's biological diversity.

WWF's programs, often undertaken with local partner organizations, seek to empower local people to effectively manage their own natural resources. Through education and communication, the organization encourages more citizens to participate in conservation initiatives, and helps shape local, national, and international policies that can build on and replicate the sound conservation efforts developed in individual communities.

You'll need a guide if you're going to travel through this beautiful and diverse land, so we'll arrange for a true native, the parrot, to show you around. The parrot is the perfect guide, living as it does in forest, it's aerial view of the region gives it a unique perspective to see everything that happens. So click on the parrot for a guided tour through WWF's LA/C country and regionwide projects, or select from the menu above left.