World Wildlife Fund

1. World Wildlife
Fund

4. • The World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) is an
international non-
governmental organization
working on issues regarding
the conservation, research
and restoration of the
environment, formerly named
the World Wildlife Fund,
which remains its official
name in Canada and the
United States.
• It is the world's largest
independent conservation
organization with over 5
million supporters
worldwide, working in more
than 100 countries,
supporting around 1,300
conservation and
environmental projects.
• WWF is a foundation, in

5. The idea for a fund on
behalf of endangered
animals was initially
proposed by Victor
Stolan to Julian Huxley
in response to articles
he published in the
Observer.
WWF was conceived on 29
April 1961, under the
name of World Wildlife
Fund, and its first
office was opened on 11
September that same year
in Morges, Switzerland.
Godfrey A. Rockefeller
also played an important
role in its creation,
assembling the first
staff
Its establishment marked
with the signing of the
founding document called
Morges Manifesto that
lays out the formulation
ideas of its
establishment.
A separate organization,
The American
Conservation
Association, was merged
into the WWF.

6. • The Giant Panda mascot of WWF
originated from a panda named Chi
Chi that was transferred from the
the London Zoo in the same year of
the establishment of WWF.
• As the only giant panda residing in
the Western world at that time,
along with its physical features and
status as an endangered species,
panda is seen to serve the need of a
strong recognizable symbol of the
organization. Moreover, the
organization also needs an animal
that would have an impact in black
and white printing.
• The logo was then designed by Sir
Peter Scott from the preliminary
by a Scottish naturalist, Gerald
Watterson

7. History of WWF
• In 1960, Huxley went to East
Africa to advise UNESCO on wildlife
conservation in the area.
• He was moved by what he saw.
• On his return to London, he wrote
3 articles for The Observer
newspaper in which he warned the
British public that habitat was
being destroyed and animals hunted
at such a rate that much of the
region's wildlife could disappear
within the next 20 years.
• The articles hit home. They
alerted readers to the fact that
nature conservation was a serious
issue. Huxley received a number of
letters from concerned members of
the public. Among these was a
letter from businessman Victor
Stolan, who pointed out the urgent
need for an international

8. • But Stolan stressed that he was
not in a position to launch such
organization himself.
• Huxley therefore contacted
ornithologist Max Nicholson,
Director General of Britain's
Nature Conservancy, who took up
the challenge with enthusiasm.
• By spring 1961, Nicholson had
gathered together a group of
scientists and advertising and
public relations experts, all
committed to establishing an
organization of the kind Stolan
had suggested.
• Prominent among those experts
was another ornithologist Peter
Scott, a vice-president of IUCN,
who was later to become the new
organization's first chairman.

9. • The group decided to base its
operations in neutral Switzerland,
where IUCN had already transferred
its headquarters to a villa in the
small town of Morges on the northern
shores of Lake Geneva.
•
On the 29th April 1961 they produced
the Morges Manifesto (PDF 750kb).
The founding document which signaled
the very beginning of WWF as we know
it today.

12. • Its first grants went
to IUCN,
• the International
Council for Bird
Preservation (ICBP, now
Birdlife
International),
• the International
Waterfowl Research
Bureau,
• the International Youth
Federation for the
Study and Conservation
of Nature.