Defending a Planet in Peril
Mighty Earth 2024 Annual Report
Letter from the Board Chair and CEO
Dear friend,
“Defending a planet in peril” was a tagline for Mighty Earth when we built our first website nearly a decade ago. The dangers we faced at the time – climate change, mass extinctions, rampant destruction of forests and savannas across the globe – were self-evident. These perils remain today, and so does the need for an organization like Mighty Earth to address them.
For the movement to protect Nature and fight climate change, 2024 was a year of tremendous highs and discouraging lows. Even as we made significant progress in our major campaigns, the anti-democratic lurch of many countries in the West culminated in the Trump administration’s attacks on some of our country’s most fundamental nature and climate protections including the Roadless Rule that protects 58.5 million acres of forest, Alaska’s wilderness protections, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and many others. Internationally, they have aggressively lobbied to sabotage similarly basic agreements to protect nature and climate in a way that creates headwinds for our work.
Against this backdrop of democratic backsliding, increasing authoritarianism, and the abandonment of environmental commitments, the victories we have been able to achieve mean even more. Each success keeps hope alive and reminds us that progress remains possible.
Indeed, we like to think we’ve had a big impact every year since our founding, but – notwithstanding all the challenges – 2024 saw Mighty Earth’s team achieve transformation on a new scale, with highlights including unprecedented commercial action to stop deforestation in the Amazon and other ecosystems; efforts to protect and restore forests and biodiversity in Southeast Asia; and progress on decarbonization of auto supply chains. We are also thrilled that 2024 saw us kick-off an exciting new rewilding initiative in the United States, part of our ongoing work to ‘rewild hearts and minds’ and inspire the world with a vision of healthy, restored ecosystems that protect wildlife and sequester carbon.
We count on you to make this work possible. If you are interested in continuing to support our work, you can make a donation at our website or explore other ways to donate at the end of this report.
Thank you for your support. We are proud to share these highlights of Mighty Earth’s 2024 accomplishments with you, and we hope you can take pride in helping make these much-needed victories for Nature and climate possible.
Sincerely,
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Tom Kuo, Board Chair Tom Kuo, Board Chair |
Glenn Hurowitz, Founder & CEO Glenn Hurowitz, Founder & CEO |
Restoring America's Lions
Mighty Earth is working to restore ecosystems around the world. In North America, our focus is on returning our missing keystone carnivore - the mountain lion - back home to the Eastern United States.
When European settlers arrived in North America, they eradicated wildlife and left broken ecosystems in their wake. By the mid-1800s, wolves had disappeared from the Northeast. Mountain lions (also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts) vanished not long thereafter.
Today, we know every species has a role to play in a healthy ecosystem. Animals affect the landscape, plant life, and other animal populations in myriad ways –changing the flow of riverbeds and streams, reducing wildfire damage, controlling the spread of disease, and more.
In 2024, Mighty Earth completed a detailed social and political scoping process to determine where to focus, worked with the Cougar Research Collaborative, Panthera, and other partners to develop conservation plans, and hosted a fundraising event to secure the resources we need to win.
As a result of this planning, Mighty Earth launched its state-level campaign in Vermont with the hiring of a Campaign Director and other team members in early 2025 – and are already seeing big results. We are recruiting allies and supporters, staging informational events, and earning media attention that will help build the movement to bring catamounts home.
"The vision of healthy, restored forests across the Eastern US can provide what all our best movements are built on: hope."
The Cougar, Female & Young, from Audubon's the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America
The Cougar, Female & Young, from Audubon's the Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America
A baby catamount
A baby catamount
Mighty Earth hosted a fundraising dinner in New York City to launch its rewilding campaign
Mighty Earth hosted a fundraising dinner in New York City to launch its rewilding campaign
T-shirts from the Mighty Earth rewilding campaign
T-shirts from the Mighty Earth rewilding campaign
Big Changes for Big Meat
How Mighty Earth is delivering transformative change across the agricultural frontier
“We have just witnessed one of the most important actions taken by a retailer to stop deforestation in years.”
2024 saw Mighty Earth achieve remarkable progress in the meat industry. The meat industry causes more destruction of Nature than the rest of agriculture combined, and occupies 80 percent of the world’s arable land. Across different countries, the meat industry is so powerful that it’s rare for governments to stand in their way as they bulldoze rainforests or pollute waterways that communities rely upon.
However, big supermarkets and the industry’s own financiers have a lot of sway. 2024 saw the culmination of our campaign to persuade these companies to leverage their power to stop the bulldozers in their tracks.
Big meat and soy companies have driven devastating deforestation in Brazil. Credit: Maria Magdalena
Big meat and soy companies have driven devastating deforestation in Brazil. Credit: Maria Magdalena
We identified retail giant Carrefour – headquartered in France, with 14,000 stores across 40 countries – as the key actor because it sources massive amounts of beef from the companies, like JBS, that are most responsible for deforestation. Through engagement with its CEO and board members, hard-hitting media investigations, and a grassroots campaign, we got the company’s attention – and provided the satellite monitoring data for them to act.
Carrefour laid out the stakes clearly for its suppliers and secured action. JBS, Minerva, Marfrig and others suspended almost 1,000 companies from their supply chains after data showed their links to deforestation. This move sent a powerful signal on the ground that deforestation would translate into loss of market access.
Carrefour became the first global retailer to launch a Forest Transparency Platform, a pioneering initiative that collects reports on non-compliance risks (including Mighty Earth’s Rapid Response reports), provides updates on their status, and ensures transparency in Carrefour’s supply chain. This platform also serves as a mechanism to ensure suppliers like JBS and Cargill to comply with Carrefour’s deforestation-free sourcing policies.
Carrefour also agreed to extend its animal-free protein marketing so that it can address the core causes of meat’s footprint on the environment.
Progress With the World's Biggest Meat Company
The meat and dairy industries cause more deforestation than the rest of agriculture combined, and more climate pollution than the entire global transportation sector. Mighty Earth is breaking the link between agriculture and deforestation, tackling methane and other climate pollution, and driving a shift to plant-based and other sustainable protein options.
JBS and other meatpackers Marfrig and Minerva wage a “War on Nature,” in the Pantanal wetlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to the largest concentration of jaguars on the planet.
JBS and other meatpackers Marfrig and Minerva wage a “War on Nature,” in the Pantanal wetlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to the largest concentration of jaguars on the planet.
In 2024, Mighty Earth took on the world’s largest meat company – JBS – as it sought to go public on the New York Stock exchange. The team filed detailed complaints with the SEC about the company’s broken climate promises, massive emissions, and sketchy business practices.
Mighty Earth also recruited a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and representatives to amplify our concerns and secured a front-page New York Times exposé about how a cattle rancher used one of the chemical compounds in Agent Orange to destroy more than 200,000 acres of forest – even as JBS and others continued buying his cattle.
Mighty Earth's Rapid Response report about chemical defoliation made the front page of the New York Times
Mighty Earth's Rapid Response report about chemical defoliation made the front page of the New York Times
Though JBS’ IPO was eventually approved after nearly two years by the Trump administration in 2025 – not long after JBS’ US subsidiary became the single largest donor to the Trump inaugural committee – the campaign still made significant breakthroughs.
For example, JBS agreed to start using real time data to assess deforestation and block suppliers, and dropped hundreds of suppliers after we demonstrated their links to deforestation – sending a powerful signal throughout the meat industry that destroying native ecosystems would lead to a loss of market access.
“To transform an industry, you have to move the major players. JBS is the biggest and most impactful of the meat companies – but we have shown that even they can improve and evolve when they feel the pressure.”
Taken together, these two campaigns show how in 2024 – despite undeniable setbacks – Mighty Earth helped accelerate transformation of the global meat industry.
Hyundai Drops Coal
Mighty Earth works to tackle the big issues that don’t get the attention commensurate to their importance to the climate. Heavy industrial materials like steel, aluminum, nickel, and batteries are responsible for about a quarter of total climate pollution – but until recently haven’t received much attention.
We see huge potential to decarbonize these sectors by switching from coal to renewables in the energy-intensive processes needed to manufacture these materials. But in the absence of government action, we’re focusing on private sector transformation.
Our campaign focuses on the big auto companies, who buy high-value products from the makers of these basic materials – and therefore are uniquely positioned to set the value of production.
One of our major focus companies is Hyundai, which has emerged over the last decade as a leader in electric vehicle production in particular. However, many of Hyundai’s industrial suppliers are still making their materials with coal.
Mighty Earth talked to Hyundai about how they can move their supply chain to clean energy, but talks weren’t producing real progress. We analyzed how we could move Hyundai, which cares a lot about both its reputation in its growing US market, as well as in its home based of Korea. So we teamed up with nature-loving K-pop fans from Kpop4Planet on a campaign to urge Hyundai to drop Adaro Minerals, a subsidiary of a large Southeast Asian coal plant, as a supplier.
Through a combination of digital and in-person actions focused on Hyundai’s brand, we were able to bring greater urgency to the issue of coal in Hyundai’s supply chain. Hyundai announced it would drop Adaro, sending a powerful signal throughout the aluminum industry that reliance on coal was becoming a major commercial liability.
“Driving decarbonization in big industries like steel and aluminum can seem daunting, but the Hyundai campaign shows that strategic campaigning really can deliver results for the climate.”
We’ve since launched detailed, substantive discussions with Hyundai about a deeper transformation, and were pleased to see the company – to its credit – announce that its new steel factory in Louisiana aims to produce green hydrogen. While there’s lots to do, we are hopeful that Hyundai is on a more climate friendly trajectory that will create pressure for other companies to do the same.
Another Adaro mine - this one in Tabalong Regency, South Kalimantan, Indonesia - shows the destruction that can accompany these sorts of projects. Photo credit: WALHI South Kalimantan
Another Adaro mine - this one in Tabalong Regency, South Kalimantan, Indonesia - shows the destruction that can accompany these sorts of projects. Photo credit: WALHI South Kalimantan
The World's Largest Deforestation Project
Over the last decade, palm oil, paper, and rubber companies have achieved a significant milestone by reducing their deforestation footprint by 90% across Southeast Asia. They’ve accomplished this globally significant win for nature and climate by adopting and implementing No Deforestation, No Peatland, No Exploitation (NPDE) policies and actively participating in industry-wide efforts to fight forest loss.
This progress has protected millions of acres of forests and peatlands, avoided well over a gigaton of climate pollution, and provided communities with better opportunities to secure land rights.
As a result, Mighty Earth’s role in the region has evolved, and we are particularly alert to new or emerging threats that could reverse the remarkable progress of the last decade. In 2024, Mighty Earth’s ability to fulfill this role was tested.
In September, months after Indonesia elected Prabowo to the presidency, excavators began clearing land in what may be the world’s largest deforestation project in Merauke’s forests and wetlands in South Papua, Indonesia. With 2,000 excavators and armed militias, the project sparked immediate human rights concerns from the U.N. Special Rapporteurs and threatened the ancestral lands and food resources of the Indigenous peoples of Malind (Marind), Maklew, Khimaima, and Yei. An estimated 5-7.4 million acres of unique closed-canopy evergreen forest, grassland, and wetland were slated to be cleared for sugarcane (including ethanol) and rice. Analysis by the Indonesian organization Pusaka estimated that 30% of the area falls into the forest/peat moratorium zone.
Excavators in Merauke. An estimated 2,000 of these vehicles were shipped to the region to work on the food estates. Credit: Mighty Earth / Yusuf Wahil
Excavators in Merauke. An estimated 2,000 of these vehicles were shipped to the region to work on the food estates. Credit: Mighty Earth / Yusuf Wahil
Mighty Earth marshaled action from senior levels of world governments, investors, and private sector companies. During COP29 in Baku, Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz met with Indonesia’s Special Envoy for Climate & Energy (and President Prabowo’s brother) Hashim Djojohadikusumo, as well as the Ministers of Environment and Forestry, to press for siting on degraded land and free, prior, and informed consent from Indigenous people (FPIC), which could also facilitate their large-scale restoration plans.
Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz meets with with Indonesia’s Climate Envoy Pak Hashim Djojohadikusumo in Azerbaijan.
Mighty Earth CEO Glenn Hurowitz meets with with Indonesia’s Climate Envoy Pak Hashim Djojohadikusumo in Azerbaijan.
Mighty Earth reached out to companies with evidence of deforestation within the Merauke food estate. By late February 2025, 34 companies no longer sourced from the Jhonlin group, including Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever, and 11 had suspended First Resources, including Hershey's and P&G.
Our Team
Staff
Glenn Hurowitz
CEO and Founder
Phil Aikman
Senior Advisor, Forests
Alex Armstrong
Vice President, External Affairs
Carlos Bravo Villa
Senior Advisor, Spain
Bárbara Buril
Associate
Jonathan Byers
Geospatial Analyst
Munya Chitambo
Staff Accountant
Jurjen de Waal
Senior Director, Netherlands
Brenda Diniz
Campaigner & Social Mobilizer
Molly Dorozenski
Vice President, Campaigns and Investigations
Mariana B. Perozzi Gameiro
Advisor, Brazil
João Gonçalves
Global Director, Protein Transition Campaign
Matthew Groch
Senior Director, Heavy Industry
Jon Haddad
Senior Associate, Heavy Industry
Mackenzie Harris
Digital Content Strategist
Sammy Herdman
Senior Campaigner for Climate, Food, and Agriculture
Anna Hong
Managing Director of Finance and Operations
Gemma Hoskins
Senior Director, UK
Tim Hudspeth
Senior Associate, Finance and Grants
Amanda Hurowitz
Senior Director, Forest Commodities
Sydney Jones
Press Secretary
Deborah Lapidus
Senior Advisor
Samuel Mawutor
Senior Advisor
Jordan McDonald
Manager, Protein Transition Campaign
Carole Mitchell
Global Communications Director
Casey Nitsch
Senior Development Director
Thea Parson
Manager, Forests & Climate
Boris Patentreger
Senior Director, France
Meihua Piao
East Asia Manager
Renee Seacor
Northeast Director, Rewilding
Roger Smith
Japan Director
Amourlaye Touré
West Africa Representative
Kristin Urquiza
Senior Advisor, Restoration and Rewilding
Alex Wijeratna
Senior Director, Legal and Investigations
Justin Williams
Major Gifts Officer
Katie Yared
Senior Associate, Forests and Climate
Board of Directors
Glenn Hurowitz
CEO and Founder
Tom Kuo
Board Chair
Ari Nessel
Board Member
Heidi Overbeck
Board Member
Ken Pucker
Treasurer
Annie Sanders
Board Member
Abdul Tejan-Cole
Board Member
2024 Financial Statement
Total expenses for the fiscal year 2024 were $6,188,041, supporting our programs and mission-driven activities throughout the year. We aspire to be the most effective environmental advocacy organization in the world, and are already among the most efficient: only 6% of our spending went to fundraising activities, with 94% of our budget dedicated to program activities and operations. And Mighty Earth continues to punch well above its weight, achieving victories that organizations ten times our size would be proud to claim.
Numbers are from audited 2024 financials. You can read the full financial report here.
Ways to Give
There are many ways to support Mighty Earth and defend a living planet. To learn more or make a donation, please contact casey@mightyearth.org.
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Mighty Earth 2024 Annual Report
Authors: Alex Armstrong, Molly Dorozenski, and Glenn Hurowitz
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