Christmas Gift Acres a great success

The World Land Trust is buckling under its own success, but we're coping.



Following the inclusion of the World Land Trust's 'gift acres' in ther Independent's 50 Best Christmas Presents, the WLT has been inundated, with email donations via the secure server, and the phone ringing non-stop. Clearly after 15 years, the concept is still as popular as ever, and early in the new year, the funds raised will be used to acquire more forest in Ecuador. And the publicity has also helped the WLT's other projects -- the coastal steppe in Patagonia, and the elephant corridor in the Garo Hills of India.



On a completely different topic, Fauna & Flora International celebrated its 100th Anniversary this week. From 1975 to 1987 I was the chief executive of FFI (then known as the Fauna & Flora Preservation Society, and under its auspices I helped launch a number of projects which still survive -- TRAFFIC is perhaps the best known, but we also launched a Bat Conservation project, which has become the Bat Conservation Trust. It was also while working with the Fauna Preservation Society, that I began to realise the importance of land acquisition as a tool for conservation. And at that time there was no organisation in Britain dedicated to it overseas. So in 1988, the idea of the World Land Trust was born. ... and the rest is history.