Synchronicity Earth was founded to support the most overlooked and underfunded of conservation issues in the world. The amphibians, even as they experience a global extinction crisis on a scale unseen in any other vertebrate group, continue to receive far too little conservation action or funding to meet the scale of the challenge.

Approximately 40 per cent of amphibian species are currently threatened with extinction, and many of them are declining at a precipitous rate. In these vanishing amphibians, the world is losing unique, beautiful, and fascinating branches of the tree of life and critical keystone members of ecosystems. Despite a relatively high volume of research, all of which has reinforced again and again the plight of the amphibians, there is a serious gap between an understanding of the crisis, and conservation action and funding to address it.

Synchronicity Earth’s Amphibian Programme, launched in 2019, aims to support and catalyse conservation efforts for threatened amphibians. It does this by improving the knowledge base to guide amphibian conservation on the ground, by funding increased amphibian conservation in the field, and by supporting the development of amphibian conservation organisations. Due to a historic lack of funding, many of the organisations actively working to conserve amphibians are nascent and face a lack of financial and institutional stability that hinders their ability to focus on their fantastic and dedicated conservation efforts.

At Synchronicity Earth, we have a track record of developing innovative funding solutions – in 2017 we established the George Rabb Amphibian Endowment Fund to ensure a long-term and stable source of funding for our amphibian conservation partners. This is an expendable endowment fund, named in honour of Dr George Rabb, who was fundamental in bringing the plight of amphibians to global attention. Through this fund we can provide stable and regular funding to those partners doing crucial work that is difficult to fundraise for – particularly red-listing work, as well as some amphibian conservation on the ground.

However, as we grow our amphibian programme to meet the huge challenge of global amphibian extinctions, we recognise that there is an urgent need to increase the rate at which we can direct funding to organisations working on the ground, and to ensure that the funding available increases as the capacity and number of our amphibian partners grows.

In 2020, our Chief Scientific Adviser Simon Stuart won the Blue Planet Prize for his outstanding contributions to wildlife conservation throughout his career. We were able to use part of this prize to launch the Amphibian Conservation Fund in support of Synchronicity Earth’s Amphibian Programme. With matched funding from three more generous donors, Fondation Segré, Oak Foundation and BAND Foundation, Synchronicity Earth is now building a vibrant coalition of partners united by an absolute determination to reverse the plight of amphibians. A challenge for donors wishing to support amphibian conservation in the past has been the fact that most amphibian conservation work is undertaken by small, institutionally informal groups, working at a very local level in often remote and challenging regions.

Through the Amphibian Conservation Fund, like-minded donors can join forces and their resources to direct funding to a strategic and considered portfolio of partners within Synchronicity Earth’s Amphibian Programme. We have been able to find a diverse and promising set of organisations to work with through our close collaboration with the Amphibian Survival Alliance, which plays a critical role as the umbrella body of the amphibian conservation movement.

Our approach allows funding to be allocated in a way that ensures long-term support, access to the learning network of the wider Synchronicity Earth Programmes, and Synchronicity Earth’s support to build institutional capacity. This is particularly valuable for the smaller and more remote organisations, which are doing invaluable work on the ground but are often hard to access. These conditions mean that donors can rely on their funding to effectively enable a diverse range of conservation partners to focus on what they do best: saving amphibians from extinction.

Already, in the first few months of its existence, the Amphibian Conservation Fund is supporting Synchronicity Earth partners in Brazil, Peru, Ghana, South Africa, Madagascar and Papua New Guinea. For more information about the projects supported by the Amphibian Conservation Fund, visit the Amphibian Programme and learn about our Amphibian Programme partners. If you would like to speak to us about contributing to the Amphibian Conservation Fund, please get in touch.

By: Pria Ghosh, Synchronicity Earth

Photo: Vernon Crookes, Endangered Wildlife Trust