Introduction

WildEarth is a broadcasting company which achieves its mission ‘to increase the value of nature’ by helping people feel remotely present with wildlife. Established in 2007, WildEarth provides LIVE streaming of nature experiences such as African safaris and freediving in the sea forest.

WildEarth Animal Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) is a new, sustainable revenue source for wildlife habitat conservation and a novel method for fans, conservationists and collectors to save the planet one wild animal at a time.

WildEarth has established a dedicated new subsidiary in Singapore that will be extending the WildEarth product range by associating (NFTs) with individual animals, which will not only allow collectors of those tokens to follow an individual animal throughout its life, but in doing so know that they are making a direct contribution to nature conservation where that particular animal lives.

WildEarth’s NFT program will provide for 40% of the initial sale price of the NFTs, and 8% of the value of all future trading in each NFT, being routed to the owner or manager responsible for conservation of the wildlife habitat in which that specific animal lives or lived (Custodian). The goal is to provide a significant incentive to conserve that habitat and produce a long term revenue stream for the habitat’s Custodian.

Broadcasting daily from the same reserves in South Africa and Kenya for many years, WildEarth often follows individual animals over time which has made them well-known to our audience. As our viewers continue to watch, they become familiar with these animals as individuals that are faced with unique challenges, opportunities and decisions. These stories lead many of our viewers to empathise with and to gain insight into the animal, its habitat and into nature as a whole. Many of these animals have acquired names helping viewers to distinguish them from others of their species.

WildEarth is now creating a registry of the more well-known animals seen on our broadcasts and recorded in the extensive WildEarth Library of previously broadcast wild animal sightings (Registry). In the future, we intend to expand the animals in our WildEarth Library to those identified in wild habitats worldwide. This will in turn expand the animals listed in the Registry. The intention is to sell limited editions (collections) of NFTs of animals listed in the Registry.

Owning an NFT for a specific animal does not convey any rights over the animal or the images in the WildEarth Library but it will enable a collector to log into the WildEarth app, once it is developed, and follow the animal they are connected to by owning an NFT from that animal’s collection.

The buyers of the first collections of NFTs will be assisting the development of the WildEarth app by logging in during its development phases. The WildEarth app will allow NFT collectors to get to know and to follow ’their’ animal(s) and to communicate with others owning NFTs in the same collection. All photographic and video images will remain the property of WildEarth.

This document outlines the principal aspects of registration of an animal on the WildEarth Animal Registry, the minting and disbursement of collections of NFTs and the use of revenues from sale and resale of NFTs to incentivise the conservation of productive wildlife habitat.

The WildEarth Animal Registry Committee (the Registry Committee) will determine which animals will be registered and hence are eligible to be minted as NFTs. The Registry Committee will have the responsibility of deciding whether there is sufficient authentic evidence of identifiable individuality of an animal to be added to the Registry. The Registry Committee will apply the best available standards and methods, including Artificial Intelligence, in making their decisions. Qualifying animals will be added to the Registry together with details of their location and of the ownership or Custodian of the habitat in which the animal lives.

In time, WildEarth intends to expand the Registry to include animals proposed to WildEarth from habitats around the world. The decision to add, or remove (where identification has been found to be erroneous), an animal from the Registry will be entirely at the discretion of the Registry Committee.

The first animals to be registered by the Registry Committee are being selected from the WildEarth Library which consists of sightings of individual animals known to be authentic.

The minimum requirements for an animal to be entered into the Registry are:

1. The animal must have been seen on WildEarth at least once before (either on our channel, or on the WildEarth app) and thus have been recorded in the WildEarth Library
2. The animal must be confirmed as an individual by the Registry Committee.
3. The animal must be novel to the Registry

Once an animal is recorded in the Registry it is eligible for minting in a limited collection of NFTs. The decision to mint a collection of NFTs of an animal will be made by the Minting Committee of WildEarth Singapore Limited (WildEarth Singapore Miniting Committee) which will make arrangements for it to be offered for sale.

Once animals have been added to the Registry the WildEarth Minting Committee can elect to open a “minting window” during which NFTs will be sold to qualified buyers, then they will be minted and disbursed. Once the minting window has closed no further NFTs will be minted for that collection.

Each NFT, irrespective of which blockchain or in which collection it is part of, will have a unique token ID that will be linked to a specific animal in the WildEarth Animal Registry and correspond to a specific number in that collection. It is anticipated that it will be possible to use the unique token ID to access the occasions on which that animal has been seen on WildEarth.

WildEarth will sell the NFTs during minting windows as it may determine. In making this determination it will consider the long-term benefit to the habitat and to those responsible for maintaining the specific animal’s habitat (i.e. the Custodians).

A NFT Drop (Drop) is an opportunity provided to obtain ownership of an NFT during a fixed minting and buying window. To qualify to buy or receive a free NFT participants will need to be registered on the wildearth.tv website. Only WildEarth.tv registered users, including WildEarth Explorers (paying premium users), that have successfully undergone a KYC [Know Your Customer] process will qualify to participate in Drops.

WildEarth will communicate with registered users notifying them of the date and time of each Drop, which NFTs will be available, at what price(s), and on which platforms. The notice will specify which fiat and crypto-currencies and which payment methods are acceptable. All NFTs will be provided in accordance with the WildEarth NFT standard terms and conditions.

40% of the first net sales price paid by a purchaser (excluding VAT and similar taxes) for a NFT will be paid to the Custodian of the land on which the specific animal currently lives or lived when it was recorded in the WildEarth Library. In addition, each NFT will include a provision for a royalty of 10% such that on each subsequent sale or transfer (re-sale) of the NFT 10% of the net re-sale price will be automatically transferred to a predetermined wallet owned by WildEarth Singapore Limited. 80% of these re-sale royalties (8% of the net re-sale price) will be transferred to the relevant Custodians. The provision of new long term revenue to Custodians, by way of the re-sale royalties, is intended to help ensure that Custodians have a long-term interest in maintaining the animal’s habitat. This is a key objective of WildEarth’s goal of incentivising the conservation of habitats for wild animals.

Payments of both the 40% of the net first sale price and the net 8% of re-sale prices will be carried out pursuant to a Conservation Agreement which each Custodian enters into with WildEarth Singapore Limited. These payments will be made in the Custodian’s local or in international fiat currency (eg US Dollar) to ensure accountability. The Conservation Agreement will include conservation standards to be adhered to by the Custodian. Breach of the Conservation Agreement will lead to suspension or loss of NFT revenue. Where a collection of NFTs has no clear Custodian (for example a whale in international waters), or revenues are not paid due to breach of Conservation Agreements, WildEarth will use the NFT revenue which would have otherwise gone to a Custodian to incentivise the expansion or creation of new wildlife habitat by new or existing Custodians.

It is possible for an animal to have been seen in more than one reserve or area on WildEarth during its lifetime for example where Custodians share a boundary. If an animal is seen in more than one Custodian’s area WildEarth will split revenue according to fair, consistent and predetermined rules across all the Custodians in good standing. If the animal appears in the WildEarth Library on a property which does not have a current Conservation Agreement at the time of sale or resale of an NFT then that landowner or custodian is not regarded as a qualifying Custodian and will not share in the NFT revenue.

Logging in to WildEarth with a crypto wallet containing a NFT will allow a collector to see sightings in the WildEarth Library of the animal to which that NFT is linked. This WildEarth app is not yet available but is under construction and is expected to be available to WildEarth animal NFT holders and WildEarth Explorers to beta test in the second quarter of 2022. One reason why we are distributing the first editions of NFTs (some of which will be free) is that we need collectors to interact with the app and database and provide input as we develop it.

The unique utility of these NFTs is the combination of creating or deepening the connection the collector feels with nature in general and the animals they collect in particular and the direct benefit the sales and resales provide to those animals by financially supporting the work of the Custodians of the habitat on which they live. The deepening of this connection is not achieved through actual ownership of the animals or exclusive access to their videos and images, but through the feeling of helping protect them and the various special ways of following their lives and sharing the experience with others that are accessible to holders of NFTs.

In future, it is anticipated that the owners of a NFT will be able to access a special message board that only collectors of that specific animal NFT can post on or see. This is currently under development. NFT collectors from the first Drops will help the WildEarth team to develop the WildEarth app. In the next phases more special features will be added, such as instant notifications whenever the animal is seen and more.

In the future WildEarth plans to create minting windows for new animals added to the Registry in real time and offer the opportunity to mint NFTs in these new collections for individual animals to registered and qualified users only.

WildEarth intends to scale this opportunity to conservation habitat Custodians around the world, in addition to those wildlife habitat Custodians that already partner with us, to contribute to the WildEarth broadcast channels and apps. To achieve this goal we aim to build a system where many Custodians can automatically capture footage of wild animals in nature and securely send that video to WildEarth for inclusion in the WildEarth Library and Registry. It is our hope to make it possible for all reliably identified animals to be registered as Limited Collections of NFTs so that the world’s habitat managers have the opportunity to earn new revenue without the need for any exploitation of the animals or their habitat.