With thanks to Jackie Chan, our “Don't be a Villain to Wildlife” campaign in China reminding the public to stop consuming wildlife was a great success, in fact one of our biggest campaigns ever! We placed 643 billboards and 130,000 digital screens in airports, train stations, bus stops, and other prominent locations, reaching over 1 billion views with many more on social media. We even secured placement on the newly opened China-Laos high-speed railway. In a survey of people in the Guangzhou subway, where many of our billboards reside, 71% of respondents said they recognize the ads and 88% said they would not consume “gamey meat” after seeing the PSA, while 84% said they believe eating “gamey meat” is unacceptable. 

Last month, WildAid launched a massive public awareness conservation campaign in Nigeria to reduce demand for illegal bushmeat in major urban centers, support enforcement activities to tackle the illegal wildlife trade, and raise awareness of disappearing wildlife using the slogans “Keep them wild, keep us safe” and “Poaching steals from us all.” The campaign stars Afrobeats artists Davido and Mayorkun, Nigeria footballer Alex Iwobi, Nollywood star Stephanie Linus, comedians Emanuella and Josh2Funny, as well as public figures such as Sharon Ikeazor, Nigeria’s Federal Minister of State for Environment and Professor Akin Abayomi, the Honorable Commissioner for Health of Lagos State. 

President of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, signed a historic Executive Decree on January 15th to create a new marine reserve to increase protection for one of the world’s most important marine ecosystems, the Galapagos Islands, home to nearly 3,000 marine species, 20% of which are found nowhere else on Earth. WildAid and its partners will be working to implement a marine protection system that will be deployed across the new protected area, including state-of-the-art technologies to significantly enhance control of the marine reserve. For the last 20 years, WildAid has partnered with Ecuador to enforce the laws of the Galapagos Marine Reserve and prevent illegal fishing within its borders. The new ‘Reserva Marina de Hermandad’ increases the size of the Galapagos Marine Reserve to nearly 200,000 sq km of protected waters. 

To coincide with the COP 26 climate summit in late 2021, we launched a billboard campaign with the famous cartoon series Dream Academy to inspire younger generations to reduce carbon emissions through daily choices regarding transport. We placed 103 billboards in 5 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen throughout subway corridors, shopping malls, and bus stops, accumulating an estimated 56,538,000 views.