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Dear friends,
Five years ago, we set forth an ambitious goal to address the biodiversity crisis by dramatically increasing the scale, scope and pace of island restorations globally. From this goal, we are humbled and inspired to see the number and magnitude of restorations increasing, as well as the ever-growing tangible impact of these efforts.
Now, we look towards the next five years – where we will pair the many benefits of restoring islands with accelerated recovery efforts and more innovation in the field. We will do this with a continued focus on organizational health and authentic community engagement.
We just entered our 30th year and we have some big shifts on the horizon. Our current CEO, Karen Poiani, passes the torch to Dr. Penny Becker on July 1, 2024. As we launch a fresh Strategic Vision, we are primed for a seamless transition.
It’s your support that will get us across the finish line in 2029, allowing us to reach the impacts and outcomes we expect and beyond. We’re thrilled to embark on this journey together. To build on our work and see new success stories unfold. To inspire, learn and create a lasting, tangible impact – for nature and people worldwide.
Restore islands for nature and people worldwide
A world filled with vibrant biodiversity, resilient oceans, and thriving island communities
Island Conservation’s story began 30 years ago when two UC Santa Cruz professors witnessed the detrimental impacts of introduced, damaging invasive species on islands. They embarked on a mission to remove invasive species to prevent seabirds from facing extinction. At our core, we are global leaders and remain dedicated to eliminating this primary threat to islands as an essential step towards restoring them.
Excitingly, we learned that restoring islands does much more than prevent species extinctions. Removing invasive species and re-establishing native plants and animals revives the entire ecosystem, supports local island communities, promotes healthy oceans, and acts as a natural defense against climate change.
The next five years will be transformational for both Island Conservation and for the conservation of islands around the world. We’re ringing in a new era that allows us to innovate smarter and harder for nature and people. As always, we look forward to working with island communities, governments, businesses, non-profit organizations, and you to realize this vision.
Now, let’s look onward and see what the next five years will have in store.
Over the last five years, we invested in scaling strategies to develop and test breakthroughs in methods and funding for island restoration. We restored more islands than ever before and continued to support others where intervention was needed most.
As a result, we have so many stories to share. Here are a few:
In short, we saw extraordinary benefits from the efforts put in, and invite you to learn more about the many successes and lessons learned in our 2023 Impact Report.
Island Conservation will amplify the multiple benefits of island restoration, innovate and mainstream methods, and implement and accelerate ecosystem recovery, building ecological resilience across our world’s islands.
We will continue to demonstrate the benefits of island restoration for biodiversity and oceans. We will establish that island restoration has significant benefits for climate resilience and community well-being.
We will increase our focus on re-establishing native plants and animals to their island and ocean homes. These critical actions rebalance ecosystems and speed up the restoration of island-ocean environments such as coral reefs, island uplands, and nearshore habitats.
We will develop and mainstream innovative island restoration tools and methods while continuing to seek new ones. This will revolutionize the way we, and the entire field of island conservation, restore islands.
We strive to continue improving our processes and relationships to better foster authentic, equitable, and transparent collaboration with indigenous and local island communities. Additionally, we will establish metrics to quantify and document the potential and actual benefits of island restoration for these communities.
We aim to sustain and enhance the financial health of the organization and the wellbeing of our teammates to better achieve this Strategic Vision. We built our Guiding Principles, Core Values, and DEI Principles to be the foundation of our organization and the work that we do. We are committed to good governance through transparency, inclusivity, and accountability so we can continue to foster effective leadership.
We are committed to the highest ethical, professional, and scientific standards in all our endeavors.
We work collaboratively to align and integrate partner values and needs into partnerships that share responsibilities for conservation actions, outcomes, benefits, and risks.
We focus our work on high returns for conservation investments and continually innovate to increase efficacy and island restoration gains.
We envision and strive to contribute to a world that is inclusive, interconnected, just, and sustainable. A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is fundamental to all we do.
1 Amplify Multiple Benefits
2 Accelerate Recovery
3 Foster Innovation
Expand the scientific foundation of restoration benefits
Accelerate growth and adoption of innovative methods
Build a community of practitioners and partners for island restoration
Share the measurable and holistic benefits of island restoration
Increase relevance and urgency of restoration and rewilding to new sectors
Early ecosystem recovery
Improved project viability
Increased scale of impact
Increased resources and capacity
Resilience to climate change
Island biodiversity
Enhanced Ocean health
Community wellbeing
This Strategic Vision stems from years of witnessing projects producing benefits beyond preventing extinctions. It comes from the knowledge that innovation leads to progressive action and that accelerated recovery is essential to addressing the urgent global crises around climate change, biodiversity extinction, and declining ocean health.
We also understand that there is power in partnerships. While our team is studying terrestrial recovery, we are in close collaboration with partners who are focusing on marine response.
Here are a few examples of our past and current projects that helped inspire our focus for the next five years:
July 19, 2023
Island community partners with international organizations to restore biodiversity and build climate resiliency by removing invasive rats. Native plants and animals are recovering and thriving on Ngerkeklau, which forms part of Palau in the western Pacific Ocean, thanks to the…
January 25, 2023
The Mona Iguana (Cyclura stejnegeri) is a Critically Endangered species of lizard found only on Mona Island, Puerto Rico. It is a large, ground-dwelling lizard that grows up to three feet in length and can live up to 40 years.…
December 19, 2022
What happens when one of the most remote places on Earth connects with the rest of the world? Island Conservation partnered with Lenovo and the community of Robinson Crusoe for the incredible Work for Humankind project to find out! And…
Many emerging studies today confirm what island communities have known for centuries: everything is connected, from ridge to reef. Here are a few recent studies that highlight the multiple benefits of holistically restoring islands:
January 15, 2025
We're joining the Global Rewilding Alliance, a network of environmental organizations around the world!
January 6, 2025
Some truly good news to brighten your day. Enjoy these stories of people helping to heal the natural world--and succeeding!
November 12, 2024
Endangered Polynesian storm-petrels returning to Kamaka Island, French Polynesia within one month of social attraction tools being deployed. Polynesian storm-petrels have not been recorded on Kamaka Island for over 100 years due to invasive rats. These seabirds are able…
Machine learning, drones, eDNA, and more – learn about how Island Conservation leverages innovation to expand our impact.
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