Certification for Conservation

Message from Fair Wild

Thank you all for taking part in our Certification for Conservation seminar.

We would also like to apologize for some technical issues and, most importantly, give a huge thank you to our stellar speakers: Anastasia Timoshyna, Francis Vorhies, Christine Leppai, Deborah Vorhies, Sally Goldstone, Zahra Osman, Jose F. González-Maya, Khilenda Gurung, and Ray Victurine.

Here are our top 6 highlights from the presentations

🌱 Natural ecosystems have declined by 47% on average, relative to their earliest estimated states. Additionally, 72% of indicators developed by Indigenous People and local communities show ongoing deterioration of nature elements important to them. (IPBES, 2019). These data demonstrate the importance of landscape-scale wildlife conservation.

🌿 Preserving the land as it is and ensuring sustainable wild harvesting is probably the best long-term conservation tool, and certifications play a key role in this effort.

🦍 Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network has protected hundreds of threatened species, including the Andean bear and the jaguar.

🍃 With 57 certified plant species, FairWild Foundation is the only certification focused solely on sustainable wild harvesting. There are now 1.7 million wild hectares protected under FairWild certification.

🌞 Zahra Osman, Director of neo botanika, stressed the importance of the 4 T's for conservation in the case of frankincense: Training, Traceability, Tree Counts, and Treasured.

🌷 Dr Sally Gouldstone emphasized the importance of third-party certifications for combating greenwashing and as a source of customer trust.