Mission Statement

Angel Conservation is dedicated to creating, developing, documenting, supporting and working with programs / projects that conserve and preserve the cultures of indigenous peoples, native floral / fauna species and the natural environments that gave them life.

Our goals are achieved by working shoulder to shoulder with the indigenous people and with national and international cultural and environmental specialists, institutions and organizations, to provide the resources and programs for education, research and the restoration of cultures and lands.

A Global Vision

Angel Conservation’s vision is global, as there are dozens, if not hundreds, of indigenous cultures at risk of extinction every year. And it’s a loss that the world cannot afford.

Although there are 370 million indigenous peoples in 70 countries they are only 4 percent of the world’s population, but they represent 95 percent of the planet’s cultural diversity. The earth’s more than 5,000 indigenous groups are scattered from the rainforests of the Amazon to the deserts of India and from the Arctic polar ice to the vast outback of Australia, and they speak some 6,000 different languages. But here comes the awful news: within the next century, 90 percent or more of that linguistic diversity -- all but 250 to 600 languages -- will probably disappear. In one way it is a trend that may facilitate communications between different peoples.

However, it also threatens to erase forever aspects of the cultural identity of the tribes or ethnic groups affected. Language not only assigns names to objects and abstractions, it also reveals the importance a particular culture places on kinship and other relationships between individuals.

To keep these languages alive has therefore become a pivotal interest in Angel Conservation’s work. So, with our “first friends” the Pemón, we made our initial baby steps in what we hope will become a global effort in sharing lessons learned through our successes in Canaima with many other cultures worldwide that face the same threats.

Angel Conservation’s board is an eclectic group of well traveled internationals from many different walks of life but all have at least two things in common: the deep love for native cultures and the fierce determination to help keep them alive.