Our goal in establishing Legends of the Wild has been to create an intersection between the multi-billion dollar tourism industry and the many underfunded wildlife conservation efforts.

Underlying this strategy is the recognition that a vast majority of tourism revenues is dependent upon the attractiveness of wildlife and wild-lands. The alarming rate of depletion of animal species and wild-lands across the planet today will certainly undermine future growth in tourism revenues barring significant increases in the funding of conservation initiatives.

As a tour operator, we offer our clients the opportunity to join small expeditions organised to monitor the status of wildlife species, most of which are endangered today. Each of our expeditions focuses on an individual field research project conducted by our naturalist guides.

Our commitment to sustainable tourism is very clear. We donate a significant portion of the revenues of each trip to fund the specific research project.

Our company was created solely to provide tangible value to specific efforts to preserve endangered wildlife. We have chosen to work directly with scientists who require funding to both initiate and sustain field research projects and who, importantly, use the product of their research to educate those segments of the population that represent the most imminent threat to specific species of wildlife.

Through interaction with and feedback from the participants in our expeditions, we have learned that no description of wildlife conservation efforts can come close to replicating the experience of witnessing, first-hand, actual field research aimed at the protection of endangered animals. As a value proposition, we offer our clients brief engagement in a field research project, in a remote locale, thereby creating for them a personal connection to the project as well as an explicit understanding of how their dollar contribution has been used.

Learn more from our founder Ray Smith.

All Snow Leopard images and video courtesy of Tashi Ghale, Manang, Nepal.

All Jaguar camera-trap images, courtesy of Ricardo Moreno, Panama.