Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund Opens Round 10 (Worldwide)

Grants are available to organisations to support projects around the world tackling the illegal wildlife trade.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is providing grants through the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Challenge Fund for projects around the world tackling illegal wildlife trade.

The Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund provides financial support to practical projects around the world which are:

  • Reducing demand for IWT products
  • Ensuring effective legal frameworks and deterrents
  • Strengthening law enforcement
  • Developing sustainable livelihoods to benefit people directly affected by IWT.

There are three levels of funding:

  • IWTCF Main

Main grants are expected to deliver strong results to tackle IWT and poverty reduction based on good evidence, and strongly demonstrate the potential to scale. Main grants will be awarded to projects which test new and innovative interventions to provide proof of concept at a smaller scale.

  • IWTCF Extra

Extra grants are for projects aimed at expanding activities that have already demonstrated success and impact at a smaller scale. This can be through landscape or replication scaling, or through delivering systems change which will have sustained impact beyond the project’s original scale. 

  • IWTCF Evidence

Evidence grants are for projects which gather evidence to design an intervention. Applications should describe how the improved evidence base will be used to design an intervention where there is a gap in approaches. Projects may include, for example, market research to design and baseline demand reduction interventions. Applicants are encouraged to develop evidence projects into full interventions as part of follow-on applications to the IWT Challenge Fund.

Applications must come from an organisation, not an individual. Where organisations are working in partnership, there needs to be a lead organisation.

Applications are welcome from different types of organisations, including academic institutions and private sector organisations.

The total funding available is around £4 million.

There are three levels of funding:

  • IWTCF Main: for grants between £75,000 – £600,000
  • IWTCF Extra: for grants between £600,000 – £1,500,000
  • IWTCF Evidence: for grants between £20,000 – £100,000.

The application deadlines for Round 10 are:

  • Stage 1: 19 June 2023
  • Stage 2: (by invite only) – 30 October 2023.

(This report was the subject of a GRANTfinder Newsflash.)