A million acres more
In Australia and five other countries around the world, global tech company HP Inc. is helping WWF protect and restore vast swaths of forests—and setting a new benchmark for corporate responsibility.
By
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Teresa Duran
Photos by
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Franck Gazzola
© WWF-US / Franck Gazzola
Well past dusk one spring evening, five women walk through a forest in eastern Australia amid towering mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans), which reign over a dominion of ferns and wattle bushes. WWF-Australia ecologist Dr. Kita Ashman is in the lead, scanning the giant trees with a powerful flashlight. Accompanying her are three colleagues from Australian National University (ANU) and Olivia West, sustainability manager at HP Inc., which supports the scientists’ work.
It’s not long before they find the object of their search. Ashman’s light catches four reflective glints in the canopy: two sets of eyes. A pair of greater gliders—Australia’s largest gliding mammal—sit munching on eucalyptus, their outsized ears like satellite dishes, alert to every sound.
The greater glider is one of Australia’s most elusive animals. And according to the scientists, who are arguably the world’s foremost experts on the species, it’s also the cutest. About the size of a Persian cat and just as fluffy, “it’s Australia’s little Pokémon creature,” says Ashman.
© Doug Gimesy / naturepl.com
The glider has a furry membrane that stretches from its ankles to its elbows, allowing the marsupial to sail hundreds of feet through the air. The species is notable for another reason, too—the reason, in fact, the women are here. Greater gliders have an important role as an indicator (or umbrella) species in forests like this one. Protecting them protects other species.
“If we look after the forest for gliders, we’re taking care of literally hundreds of other species,” says Ashman. “They’re also a canary in the coal mine for our forests—very sensitive to disturbance, very sensitive to climate change.”
By that measure, many of Australia’s forests aren’t doing very well. The greater glider was listed under Australia’s laws as vulnerable in 2016. Then the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–2020 destroyed close to a third of its remaining habitat. By 2022, it was relisted as endangered—and the mountain ash forests it relies on are critically endangered, too.
That’s a trajectory WWF and HP hope to reverse.
The team meets the next day at a restoration site in a nearby state forest called Toolangi. ANU research fellow Dr. Ana Gracanin arrives first and sets about organizing gear on the tailgate of her truck: tools, a rainbow of ropes and straps in a plastic tub, carabiners, and a helmet.
The roughly 345,000 acres of mountain ash forest remaining in Victoria’s Central Highlands provide critical habitat for greater gliders and a host of other species. The forest is vitally important to people, too: Water catchments and reservoirs here supply more than 65% of Melbourne’s water. Not to mention, it’s the most carbon-dense forest type in the world.
“The carbon sequestering potential of this forest is absolutely incredible,” says West. “It’s almost like a duty to protect it.”
In fact, helping to protect it is part of West’s job. She’s working to amplify the impact of HP’s projects with WWF, which aim to conserve more than a million acres of forest by 2030 across landscapes in Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Peru, and Viet Nam. Halfway through the 10-year initiative, more than 600,000 acres are benefiting from restoration and improved protections and management.
HP began supporting WWF’s work in 1992, donating equipment and software for geospatial analysis. The company continues to look for ways to provide tech solutions for conservation. “How do we integrate our tech to accelerate all of this great work?” says West. “We want to test and learn.”
HP was a key partner in WWF’s early corporate initiatives to advance climate and forest goals, and in 2008, WWF began helping the company establish and work toward credible sustainability goals. By 2016, 100% of HP branded paper was from recycled and certified sources, and by 2020, the company achieved zero-deforestation sourcing for all its paper and packaging.
HP and WWF
Through its groundbreaking partnership with WWF, HP is investing in a diverse portfolio of forest landscapes in six countries, including Australia—with the goal of conserving a million acres by 2030. In each strategic location, projects meet rigorous scientific criteria and are tailor-made to address local priorities.
The 11-year partnership has allowed WWF to plan, deeply engage with communities and other stakeholders, and adapt as needed—all with the aim of delivering long-lasting impacts for people, climate, and nature.
Learn about projects in the other five countries below.
As one of the first companies to join WWF’s Forests Forward corporate engagement program, HP is now going beyond responsible sourcing in its own supply chain to invest more broadly in nature-based solutions that can restore, protect, and improve the management of critical forests around the world. These efforts are realized in part through WWF’s Nature-Based Solutions Origination Platform, which identifies and implements high-integrity interventions in priority tropical forest landscapes to address nature loss and foster sustainable livelihoods and climate resilience.
“We selected these globally significant forests for very unfortunate reasons,” says West, “because they’re in dire need of support.”
© WWF-US / Franck Gazzola
Each HP-supported project has a unique set of forest conservation interventions driven by science and based on local priorities. All are designed to meet rigorous monitoring, reporting, and verification criteria and advance sustainable development objectives.
Eastern Australia remains a global deforestation front. The habitats where koalas, gliders, and owls live are disappearing faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. Here, WWF and HP have joined forces on a suite of projects to accelerate the transition away from unsustainable logging, promote deforestation-free agriculture, and restore and connect critical habitats.
Viet Nam
Viet Nam’s rugged Central Annamites are home to endangered Asian elephants and a host of other rare and endemic wildlife, as well as subsistence communities and smallholder producers who rely on the forests for their livelihoods. WWF and HP began work in the Central Annamites in January 2026 to help smallholders and state-owned forestry companies improve management of acacia plantations to align with Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) certification and European regulations.
Central to this work is respect for First Nations’ knowledge and connection to country. WWF partners with Indigenous communities and contractors, ensuring traditional knowledge and community priorities guide every step where consultation and collaboration are appropriate.
With HP’s backing, WWF secured a temporary halt to logging in critical habitat for greater gliders, with ambitions to secure a permanent ban. Now the WWF-HP team has scored another big win: After years of advocacy, in September 2025 New South Wales announced its plan to establish the more than 1.1 million-acre Great Koala National Park, north of Sydney.
“The modeling suggests there are around 12,000 koalas there,” says Ashman. “And some of the models suggest there are 36,000 greater gliders. That’s really cool. I’ve been low-key petitioning it should be called Greater Glider National Park,” she quips.
Mexico
In the Yucatán Peninsula, HP and WWF are contributing to the long-term protection of more than 1.3 million acres through a mechanism called Project Finance for Permanence (PFP), which secures the policy changes and funding necessary for durable conservation success. In addition, the partnership is supporting over 200 people—including beekeepers, livestock producers, and Maya farmers who practice traditional milpa cultivation—across 25,000 acres to improve land management practices in key biodiversity corridors.
Thankfully, wind is at a minimum as Gracanin navigates a tangle of ferns and begins setting up climbing ropes at the base of a staggeringly tall tree.
This forest looks pretty good to the untrained eye, but it’s missing a key component from a glider’s perspective: tree hollows. Because Australia’s climate is generally hot, many endemic species have evolved to be nocturnal, foraging after sunset and sleeping during the day in cavities that can take over 100 years to form. Ravaged by logging and fire, the forest has lost its hollow-bearing trees. So, while gliders can find plenty of mountain ash and other food sources, they can’t find places to live. It’s like having a bed and breakfast without the bed, the scientists like to say.
To help gliders repopulate this forest, WWF and HP aim to bring back viable nesting spaces in the form of high-tech, custom-built nest boxes.
Peru
In Peru’s Madre de Dios rainforest, HP and WWF are restoring nearly 850 acres of critical jaguar habitat while promoting responsible forest management across more than 180,000 acres. Cattle ranchers and forest concession holders are actively rehabilitating and managing ecosystems, demonstrating how productive landscapes can support both conservation and local livelihoods in one of the Amazon’s most biodiverse regions.
© WWF-US / Franck Gazzola
Soon Gracanin is halfway up the tree, with Ashman serving as ground crew. They discuss whether Gracanin needs a longer anchor strap to keep her from swaying side to side as she works, but she MacGyvers a solution with a shorter strap, then hauls up a nest box on a pulley and calls down for a power screwdriver. Before long, the forest has one more bed.
Ashman acknowledges that this project is no silver bullet for the broader challenges of logging and land clearing but says it’s a critical stopgap. “We need policy reform. We need funding for restoring forests at scale,” she says. “But it’s important right now, when these species are up against it, to throw them that lifeline, by restoring and augmenting habitats through things like popping in nest boxes. The more restoration work, the more lifelines, the more we’re able to build resilience into these places.”
And the more we can build resilience, she says, “the more we’re able to get these places onto the path of recovery rather than continuing on the path of extinction.”
The nest box Gracanin installs is one of hundreds now found across eastern Australia, designed by the scientists and built by community volunteers, including HP employees. A previous project using motion-sensing cameras documented gliders moving into nest boxes, and the data suggest they can help populations recover.
China
Between 2019 and 2021, HP and WWF began investing in responsible forest management and habitat restoration in China. Over 300,000 acres of forests and plantations in nine provinces across southern China are now responsibly managed and certified by FSC. The partnership also developed technical resources to improve management of China’s plantations for biodiversity and carbon sequestration. In addition, HP and WWF are improving monitoring methods for North China leopards and restoring another 80 acres of forest habitat for Asian elephants in Yunnan Province, where 19 members of a local herd are already benefiting from improved habitat connectivity and newly planted native food species.
These nest boxes are just one example of the grounded, practical projects HP and WWF are working on in Australia and five other countries around the world.
“It’s so beautiful to see so many people working together on this project,” says West, “the scientists, the community woodworkers, everyone installing these nest boxes.”
“And beyond that, there’s no way we could do this without HP,” adds Ashman. “If we want to do things at scale, if we want to do things well, collaboration is everything.”
Learn more about WWF’s partnership with HP
Brazil
In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, HP and WWF are reconnecting forest fragments, improving forest protections, and supporting Indigenous and traditional communities as they create nature-based tourism ventures. A collaboration with partners in the state of Espírito Santo is restoring more than 500 acres through a government-run program where users pay for ecosystem services like water. In the state of Bahia, HP and WWF are working with Indigenous communities to codevelop management plans for improving the protection of three national parks.
© Shutterstock/pmvtisl
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