DiCaprio and Bezos: $200 Million to Save 100 Species
The Phoenix Species Project launches as the largest single fund in history dedicated exclusively to the recovery of critically endangered animals worldwide.
The Phoenix Species Project launches as the largest single fund in history dedicated exclusively to the recovery of critically endangered animals worldwide.
Organizations funded and co-founded by actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos launched a $200 million initiative on Tuesday, August 4, 2026, to save the 100 most endangered species on Earth. The project, named the Phoenix Species Project, is led by DiCaprio's organization Re:wild and the Bezos Earth Fund.
The organizations highlight that this is the largest single fund in history dedicated exclusively to the recovery of critically endangered species. The initiative will operate in 30 countries, with supporters including the nonprofit Age of Union and the Todd Graves Family Foundation. Scientific support is provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which estimates that as many as 49,000 species-28 percent of those assessed-are currently threatened.
DiCaprio had been developing the idea of a large, coordinated effort to help animals whose habitats and survival are threatened by climate change for years. The idea took concrete shape after a 2021 meeting that brought together DiCaprio, Re:wild co-founder and CEO biologist Wes Sechrest, Jeff Bezos, who leads the Bezos Earth Fund, and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, the fund's vice president.
The Bezos Earth Fund, launched in 2020, is valued at $10 billion. Since its inception, it has awarded 41 grants, with the total value of grants for nature restoration projects reaching $591 million.
The project will focus on species whose survival is most at risk, and the list includes some of the rarest animals on the planet. Among them are the golden-crowned sifaka, a lemur from Madagascar, and the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander, a lungless tree dweller that lives exclusively in a small canyon in North Carolina.
The initiative will also protect the Visayan warty pig, an endemic species from the Philippine islands, and the Cozumel harvest mouse, which inhabits only an island off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Also on the list are the pink land iguana, found only on Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos archipelago, and the Sunda pangolin, also known as the Malayan pangolin, native to Southeast Asia.
Protection will also extend to the Tanzanian pancake tortoise, named for its flat, flexible shell, and the starry night harlequin frog, which gets its name from its appearance reminiscent of a starry night sky and lives only in the mountains of Colombia. A special place on the list is held by Attenborough's long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal from New Guinea, named in honor of the centenarian naturalist and nature storyteller David Attenborough.
One of the project's goals is to provide long-term sustainability for successful but often short-lived smaller conservation efforts.
"For years, we've been protecting the golden-crowned sifaka with a budget that never matched what this species deserves, but allowing its extinction was never an option. These funds, this global platform, and technical support change what is possible," said Tiana Andriamanana, executive director of Association Fanamby, one of the organizations receiving a grant from this initiative.
Lauren Sánchez Bezos, vice president of the Bezos Earth Fund, emphasized the determination behind the project. "One hundred species, thirty countries, and a real commitment to bring them back. We're not managing their decline. We're recovering them. We know how to do it. We just have to stay committed long enough to see it through," she said.
