Dear Friend,

Your gift can help release a $25,000 challenge grant offered by the Earth Friends Wildlife Foundation.

Make a gift today.

Today is your last chance to donate to our ocelot match campaign to help save America's "Little Leopard."

Are you up for the challenge? Donate now.

There are fewer than 100 wild ocelots left in the United States – and these 30-pound wild cats, small cousins of the leopard, are making a last stand.

Environmental Defense is working on an ambitious and creative plan to bring them back from the brink.

Your gift today can help rescue the ocelot – and your donation can help release a $25,000 challenge grant offered by Earth Friends Wildlife Foundation to support our endangered species work.

Donate now.

Today, the remaining few ocelots in the United States live in the thorny scrublands of south Texas, with a small number also barely hanging on in Mexico.

Farms, ranches and suburban sprawl have chipped away ocelot habitat to almost nothing, leaving the surviving cats – and many other endangered creatures – stranded on a handful of private lands. Partnering with these landowners, and their neighbors, is critical to the ocelot's survival. 

Enter the Safe Harbor program. Safe Harbor is a smart, collaborative approach pioneered by Environmental Defense that brings together state and federal government officials – including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – with farmers, ranchers and other private landowners. 

In exchange for restoring habitat for the ocelot, landowners receive assurances that their restoration efforts will not subject their land to additional government regulation. Everyone wins— large new blocks of ocelot habitat are created and landowners are rewarded with various incentives.

Environmental Defense is working with farmers and ranchers to restore native thornscrub by planting seedlings, the first step in ocelot recovery efforts. The near-term goal is to bring back about 5,000 acres of native vegetation so surviving cats have new habitat to raise future generations, offering new hope for ocelots. We have restored 800 acres so far, but there is still much more to be done.

Make a gift today to help us meet the Earth Friends Wildlife Foundation $25,000 Challenge.

Thanks for being a part of our work,

Fred Krupp
President
Enviromental Defense