DiCaprio And Bezos Are Putting $200 Million Into Saving 100 Species From Extinction
Leonardo DiCaprio's conservation organization Re:wild and Jeff Bezos's philanthropic vehicle the Bezos Earth Fund announced the Phoenix Species Project on August 4, 2026, committing a combined $200 million to support the recovery of 100 species currently facing imminent extinction across 30 countries, making it the largest single philanthropic initiative in history dedicated exclusively to recovering critically endangered species. The Bezos Earth Fund is committing $100 million, with Re:wild matching that amount through support from DiCaprio, the Age of Union initiative, and the Todd Graves Family Foundation. The 100 targeted species span mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, invertebrates, and plants, and include Madagascar's golden-crowned sifaka lemur, the Hickory Nut Gorge green salamander found only in a single canyon in North Carolina, Australia's night parrot, and Mexico's Charco Azul pupfish, a fish currently known to exist in exactly one spring. All 100 were selected because they sit at a threshold where intensive, sustained investment could meaningfully shift their trajectory from decline toward recovery.
DiCaprio has been developing the concept of a coordinated multi-species recovery fund for years, and recruited the Bezos Earth Fund to the project through his personal friendship with Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. Lauren Sánchez Bezos, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, framed the project's goal in direct terms: one hundred species, thirty countries, and a real commitment to bringing them back, not managing their decline, but recovering them. DiCaprio added that when we protect species on the brink of extinction, we also protect the forests, wetlands, grasslands, and oceans they depend on, and that the project has the potential to drastically shift how the world approaches conservation at a global scale. The initiative will work through more than 100 local and international partners who will lead the actual recovery efforts in each location, tailoring approaches to individual species and habitats and collaborating with Indigenous peoples and local communities throughout. More than 31,000 species are currently listed as critically endangered, endangered, or extinct in the wild on the IUCN Red List, and the Phoenix Species Project is explicitly designed to show that species on the very edge of that list can be pulled back with the right combination of sustained funding, local expertise, and political will.
