Help choose our FUZZ FUNDS donation 🎯
Three worthy organizations, $308 to donate, and your vote decides where it goes
Happy Friday! For our new subscribers, welcome — almost every newsletter will start with a deep dive on something in the world of conservation, followed by a mix of quick links and other reporting. But this newsletter is a bit different — since it’s the end of the month, you joined just in time to help make our conservation donation.
Thanks to your January support, we have $308 in FUZZ FUNDS💰 banked for our first donation. While future monthly spending will be guided by our paid subscribers, I'd like to open this inaugural vote to our entire FUZZ family.
A quick refresher on how FUZZ FUNDS currently work:
100% of your subscription support goes directly to animals and conservation (after Substack takes their 10% rake) — I don't take a cut, and I cover any costs out of pocket for running or marketing the newsletter
For annual subscribers, your contribution is divided evenly across all twelve months to ensure steady support throughout the year. Monthly subscribers contribute to the pot each month for as long as you stay subscribed
Occasionally, I’ll offer matching funds or bonuses (like last week's new subscriber promotion) to grow our total
Looking ahead, I'm working to establish FUZZ as a nonprofit, which will make your contributions tax-deductible and help us attract additional support from donors, organizations and sponsors. While $308 is a great start, I'm working really hard to create as much impact as we can create together in the months ahead.
Want to help too? Upgrade to a become a paying subscriber before the poll closes on Monday and add to our FUZZ Funds. Or make your own donation to one of these organizations — they’re truly all deserving. (And if you do, please let me know about it! I’d be psyched to hear who you decided to support.)
Now, let's meet this month's nominees... spoiler alert, it’s a bit cat heavy — we’ll broaden the focus next month.
The Manul Working Group
For our first January funding nominee, I'd like to highlight the Manul Working Group — and yep, after a month of grumpy cat arrests, World Cup drama, and the passing of legendary matriarch Tabby, you probably saw this coming. While manuls (also known as Pallas's cats) aren't endangered, understanding their population dynamics is crucial as they face increasing threats from habitat loss, conflicts with herding dogs, and extreme weather events. MWG maintains camera trap networks across Central Asia to monitor these elusive cats, gathering vital data about their behavior, breeding patterns, and responses to environmental changes.
I’ve been corresponding with them and I hope to get out in the field to see their work in person this year. They currently run monitoring networks in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, but need support to expand their coverage and maintain existing traps. (Tough weather conditions out there, particularly in winter.) In Mongolia's northeast, they're aiming to grow from 20 to 70 camera traps to better understand how manuls are adapting to changing conditions.
Unlike big cats that often attract major donor attention, small cat conservation typically operates on shoestring budgets. Supporting MWG would help maintain and expand their monitoring networks while also strengthening their work with local communities and companies to build awareness around manul conservation.
Path of the Panther
As I mentioned earlier this month, Florida panthers face mounting challenges as development encroaches on their remaining habitat. With only a few hundred panthers left in the wild and 30 killed by vehicles in 2023 alone, innovative solutions are urgently needed. Path of the Panther combines conservation photography, research, and direct action to protect these endangered cats, working directly with ranchers and landowners to maintain crucial wildlife corridors that panthers need to survive and expand their range.
Just as we saw in Colorado with the wolf reintroduction, ranchers often aren’t happy with big predators on their land. Rather than taking an adversarial approach, Path of the Panther helps ranchers implement predator-friendly practices while advocating for wildlife crossings in key areas. (Panthers and ranchers are also allies in helping to stop suburban sprawl.) With Florida preparing to break ground on three new wildlife crossings in 2025, the organization's work documenting panther movements and building community support has never been more critical. They're also expanding their camera trap network to better understand how panthers use existing crossings and identify the most crucial locations for future protection.
Wild Felid Advocacy Center
Earlier this week, we covered how Washington state's Wild Felid Advocacy Center lost 20 big cats to bird flu, highlighting how environmental challenges can have unexpected and devastating impacts on wildlife. The center provides sanctuary for rescued wild cats while advancing our understanding of wild cat health and behavior. Unlike larger wildlife organizations, they focus on providing lifetime care for cats that can't be released back into the wild while contributing valuable data about how diseases like avian influenza affect different species.
The center is working to rebuild after December's losses, which included four cougars and a rare half-Bengal tiger. Beyond just caring for their remaining animals, they're strengthening their biosecurity measures and developing new protocols to protect wild cats from emerging diseases. These improvements will not only safeguard their resident cats but also provide crucial insights for other sanctuaries and wildlife centers facing similar challenges. Their work bridges the gap between animal welfare and scientific research, helping us better understand and protect both captive and wild cat populations. And most impressively — they do this all on a budget of about $75,000 per year.
Subscriber shots!
While you're thinking about your vote, enjoy this week's subscriber photos... We had some good ones this week. Subscriber Kyle sent in these photos from Costa Rica of a brown-throated three-toed sloth and a red-eyed tree frog, both iconic members of the rainforest.
And Subscriber Logan sent in this killer shot of a young elk he took in Colorado:
One cool fact you may not know about elk: The calves are born without a scent, which helps them avoid detection by predators during the first few days of life when they're building their strength.
That’s it for me this week. We’ll get back to the news on Monday and I’ll share proof of our first donation then. Feel particularly strongly about one organization? Get your friends to sign up before Monday and you can push the vote total toward your favored cause. Have a great weekend.