Rainforest Trust is proud to be a part of the international group of leading nature conservation organizations supporting the Key Biodiversity Areas Initiative.

Protecting intact habitat around the world is vital to preserving biodiversity, unique ecosystems and everything that keeps the planet healthy. But some places have an outsized importance in conserving the world’s biodiversity. Conservation of these places is especially important to save species, protect ecological communities and preserve ecological processes.

That’s why the world’s leading nature conservation organizations launched a new partnership to map, monitor and conserve Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs). KBAs are sites with significant contributions to global biodiversity, such as a site home to most of the population of a threatened species, a site with a threatened ecosystem or a site home to a geographically isolated species.

Experts from around the world and the organizations that comprise the KBA partnership identify these sites, promote their protection and monitor their integrity. This work is creating a new, internationally recognized standard for identifying important sites for global biodiversity preservation. The KBA standard will provide a framework by which governments can delineate their own protected areas and make informed development decisions. Companies can also utilize the data to guide their business practices. Already, the partnership has identified and mapped over 18,000 KBAs worldwide.

Rainforest Trust’s mission is to protect the world’s most threatened species — and that’s why we’ve joined and are supporting the KBA partnership. Many of our successful projects have protected sites that are now KBAs and many of our ongoing projects are protecting KBAs. We are also working with the partnership to find and map new KBAs. By contributing to this growing conservation dataset, we can both further our impact and support global conservation priorities.