Saving the World's Wildlife: WWF's First Fifty Years

  • Alexis Schwarzenbach
Profile Books: 2011. 352 pp. £25/$39.95 9781846685309 | ISBN: 978-1-8466-8530-9

The conservation group WWF is now half a century old, and Saving the World's Wildlife documents that history. This is a splendidly researched and written work. But whoever came up with the title should be spanked and sent to sit in the nearest natural history library for as long as it takes to list every known species that has gone extinct or become seriously threatened since 1961.

Alexis Schwarzenbach's history is more about an organization than Earth's misery. Even the most optimistic current reports of the planet's wildlife survival status — including every species from big mammals to birds, amphibians, fishes, trees, ferns, fungi and microorganisms — suggest there is little to celebrate. WWF International currently claims the largest membership, some 5 million, of any environmental organization worldwide. (Hong Kong, by comparison, has a population of 8 million.) Yet the WWF's success as a brand has eclipsed its original remit to protect species.

Iconic species such as the African elephant have been a focus of conservation efforts for many decades. Credit: M. HARVEY/WWF-CANON

At its birth 50 years ago, the WWF was welcomed as a significant platform for conservation. Wildlife was both literally and metaphorically its middle name. It was created as a fund-raising organization to support the valuable scientific research of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which was founded at a conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1948. A group of UK-based visionaries who were passionately focused on the urgent importance of saving endangered animals and plants set up the WWF. Meeting these signatory heroes in the book and learning about their pioneering work is inspiring.

Keen newcomers with a similar heartfelt mission arrived in later years, but the WWF continued in elder statesman mode — not least because of an impressive roll-call of royal stalwarts. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Britain's Prince Philip were international presidents for many years each, and other royals were national presidents, adding allure, and commendable and significant support. The organization and its movers and shakers became widely known.

The WWF could have hired an agency to produce a glossy anniversary publication. Instead, to their credit, they commissioned an eminent Swiss historian. Schwarzenbach, who has previously written about Albert Einstein, studied WWF's scrupulously kept records and interviewed numerous living associates. None of them, he claims, tried to influence his interpretation of the WWF's history. It is all as precise as a Swiss watch.

Schwarzenbach faithfully records as much information about personalities, places and projects as his mission requires and space allows. Detailed notes, graphs and milestones are added in 30 pages of small print. Yet, surprisingly, these reveal that for almost half of those years there was hardly a pebble of significance. The period from 2004 to 2007 is empty of even a sand grain; 2008 is notable because “certified sustainable palm oil enters the market”. Yet during the same years, most serious ecologists were focused on a larger issue: vast monoculture as one of the worst enemies of wildlife biodiversity.

The mid-1980s saw a major WWF International marketing makeover. It was allowed to trash co-founder Peter Scott's brilliant original panda logo. Anyone familiar with the living creature, as I am, finds that the WWF's present symbol looks more like a large black-and-white plastic dog than the panda in Scott's iconic rendering.

The 'Wildlife' in the title was also exchanged. 'World Wide Fund for Nature', a less evocative phrase, was now employed by WWF International headquarters and 29 of the 31 national organizations around the world. Steadfast WWF Canada and US refused to give up the original name. Knowing how strenuously these changes were fought at the time, it is surprising that the word 'wildlife' is resurrected in the title of this anniversary volume.

Many activists have found efforts in the past 25 years to be less a task of saving endangered animals than of employing them as 'poster critters' in yet another corner of modern business. Dispassionate as it is thorough, the book reveals some strange marketing strategies. Who would have thought the art of selling cigarettes internationally could morph into tactics to raise funds for conservation? Conservation is an expanding market and there are more than enough crises to go around.

The author generously mentions other respected groups from the distant past. He highlights important forebears of the WWF, including US bodies such as the Wildlife Conservation Society, established in 1895; the UK Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, set up in 1889; and many others. But negligible mention of Harold Coolidge, IUCN founder and 'father of wildlife conservation', will be regarded as a serious oversight by many.

All conservation groups rely on public and governmental support. Readers and historians in the future will have to decide whether their strategies for acquiring funding are being matched by their efficiency in conservation. Perhaps they will interview the men, for the most part, who appear in this book, shown in suits (safari, business and formal); at home at royal events and in corporate boardrooms; and in some cases like deer caught in headlights.

Rejuvenation of the planet's diversity cannot depend only on organizations, their marketing teams, and a few heroes. It rests on the shoulders of each of Earth's leading large-brained primates. Thoughtful ones wish us luck.