EXPLORE WILD HOPE

Boyan Slat is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic.

Alecia has held many career positions, from software trainer to office administrator; however, outside of work she is heavily involved in volunteer associations focusing on education. Most recently, Alecia’s Clean Harbours Jamaica team has, in partnership with The Ocean Cleanup, removed over 1 million kg of garbage from the barriers and by extension from the […]

It’s estimated that up to 14 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year—and 80% of it pours into the sea from polluted rivers. In Kingston, Jamaica, Alecia Beaufort and her team at Clean Harbors Jamaica have partnered with The Ocean Cleanup to stop the waste before it ever reaches the sea.

Boyan Slat’s team at The Ocean Cleanup has developed and deployed an open-ocean system that can haul in 7000 kilos of garbage in just a day and a half. Their current target is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The hope is that a fleet of these systems will remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

Black-footed ferrets nearly went extinct several times in the 20th century. Today, the current largest threat to their survival is a non-native disease called sylvatic plague.

With over 25 years of experience in the wildlife field, Kristy Bly’s expertise is on the conservation and restoration of black-footed ferrets, black-tailed prairie dogs, and swift fox in the North American Great Plains.

Panama recognizes the rights of sea turtles under national law, including their right to a healthy environment. To figure out which places are critical to the turtles’ well-being, biologist Callie Veelenturf and children from affected communities are tagging dozens of turtles and tracking them by satellite.

At the age of 18, Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup and set out to clean plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ten years later, the team is installing catchment systems at the mouths of rivers to stop plastic pollution of the seas at their source.

Conservationists worldwide use camera traps to study the movements of wild animals. In Belize, they’ve deployed one of the longest-running grids of cameras on the planet to track the hidden lives of jaguars and to focus protections in the dwindling rainforest.

Jaguars are top predators that need large spaces in which to live and hunt. In Belize, 35% of the land has been protected—but these areas are divided into two large clusters, connected by a crucial and dangerous bottleneck that the cats must navigate to survive.