Letter from our CEO
Looking back over fiscal year 2025( ending June 30, 2025) offered an opportunity to reflect on the organization’ s accomplishments and challenges, both this year and across the past five years. This was particularly relevant as we began planning our strategy to grasp the extraordinary opportunity offered by the next five years.
From 2021-2025, Rainforest Trust’ s donors, implementing partners, board, and staff more than doubled our annual impact, raising and granting out significantly more than our $ 200 million target. This put us on track to achieve our commitment to the Protecting Our Planet Challenge of investing one-half billion dollars this decade. We also exceeded our target of safeguarding more than 17.5 billion tons of stored carbon( by comparison the U. S. emits about 6 billion tons a year). And we came close to reaching our ambitious 5-year species targets, protecting habitat for 47 % of the world’ s threatened bird species and 44 % of mammals.
Programmatically, Rainforest Trust scaled up our traditional role of saving species facing imminent extinction in biodiversity hotspots such as the Tropical Andes and the Atlantic Forest, including through land purchase. But we also greatly expanded our work safeguarding the intact ecosystems of the world’ s largest rainforests— the Amazon, Congo, and island of New Guinea— through protected-area designation and, increasingly, strengthened land-tenure.
Our board, having self-imposed term limits in 2016, refreshed itself, bringing in new skills and perspectives, including those of our new chair, Bernie Tershy, who shares his reflections in this report.
We embarked on strategic planning for the next five years from a place of financial and technical strength across our conservation, philanthropy, and administrative programs. And we are operating from a position of strength in efficiency, transparency and integrity. Our network of trusted partnerships with donors and co-funders, implementing partners, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and host-governments is wider and more collaborative than ever before.
We will draw upon these strengths, and your continued support, to dramatically expand protected and conserved areas between now and 2030 – the deadline for the world’ s commitment to reach 30 % of lands and waters protected.
Thank you for your partnership and the role you have played in helping scale our impact. The past is prologue— we can still save much of what is most valuable in our world, together.
Yours Faithfully,
Dr. James C. Deutsch, CEO
4 Rainforest Trust 2025 Annual Report