Graham developed a passion for nature during his first career as a SCUBA diving instructor. In 1998 he co-founded Africam.com, which grew to one of the biggest African websites in the early 2000s, and since then has been wholly focused on sharing nature with humanity. He is deeply inspired by the Internet and the opportunities it provides for making the world a better place for all of its inhabitants.
Korea IT Times interviews CEO Graham Wallington about how WildEarth NFT came to be, how it works, how it will help the environment, a little more about NFTs themselves, and where you can find their new television programs.
Can you tell us a little about the WildEarth project?
WildEarth is a purpose-driven for-profit Nature Tech company on a mission to increase the value of nature to people. Founded in 2007 by Graham and Emily Wallington at Djuma Game Reserve in South Africa, WildEarth has developed a global community of viewers that return daily to our unique channel for that feeling of being immersed in nature. Using a combination of live broadcasting, expert naturalists, interactivity, community, and a point-of-view shooting style, WildEarth helps millions of viewers feel remotely present in nature without increasing their footprint. Instead of a few physical guests on safari, WildEarth is able to seat millions and still have the same 4 wheels on the ground. This allows WildEarth to scale ecosystem services with no additional harm and thereby increase the value of nature for all. Providing our viewers and a broader audience to “buy into” wildlife conservation not only offers a new and clean source of income for custodians, it also offers our viewers and animal lovers an opportunity to engage with wild animals in a completely new way as well as new insights for research and animal conservation itself, as we’ll be able to offer far more data on animal population sizes.
How does the animal registry work?
We have started building our Animal Registry for the nature reserves and the individual wild animals we and our viewers have gotten to know in detail over our years of broadcasting. So the Animal Registry is human-built for now, based on the knowledge of our naturalists. In the meantime, we are also training and improving AI algorithms to create portrait pictures of animals, identify their species and their individual features. We will introduce these projects at different stages throughout our roadmap.
The focus of WildEarth is conservation and the environment. How do you choose the animals that are to be minted as NFTs?
Firstly, we have chosen animals we and our viewers know extremely well and are amongst their favorites. Starting in February we will introduce a TV show called Search&ID, which will help identify new nocturnal animals and we’ll offer limited Minting windows if we do identify new animals. Secondly, we will continue our focus on apex predators, as they’re very appealing and the change in their population sizes over time is a great means to evaluate the success of conservation efforts. Thirdly, we have focused our first Genesis Collections on animals from Djuma Game Reserve, as the journey of the WildEarth TV channel has also started there and we continue to build on this relationship.
With your broadcasting capabilities and the emotional appeal of animals, do you see longer-term holders of WildEarth NFTs as compared to the general market of flippable NFTs?
Absolutely, our Animal Conservation NFTs are like no other. Whilst, the NFTs per animal collection are very similar in appearance, this is only an initial setting, as you’ll be able to update your NFT with GIFs of more recent or your favorite sightings of your animal. Further, as an NFT holder or Guardian, you’ll get special access to events about animal conservation and build an in-depth relationship both with your individual animal and the wider WildEarth community.
Can you explain the WildEarth Genesis collections to us?
The WildEarth Genesis collection consists of 25 animal collections of some of our most famous animals from Djuma Game Reserves. Each NFT collection is linked to one unique individual animal. E.g. the Karula Collection is for the leopard Karula. There is a max cap of NFTs per collection that can be minted and a limited window in which they can be minted. For every NFT minted, WildEarth mints one extra NFT into our treasury to be sold at a later stage to provide continuous income for the custodians.
The NFTs of every animal collection display their animals’ portraits, their name, their Animal Registry ID as well as their unique NFT serial number.
WildEarth is based on the Polygon blockchain. Why did you select this chain?
We chose the Polygon blockchain primarily because it uses the Proof-of-Stake technology and therefore, is almost 200’000 times more energy-efficient than for example Ethereum it is built on. Another reason we chose it, is that it’s connected to the Ethereum blockchain and therefore, makes it possible to list and trade WildEarth Conservation NFTs on OpenSea. Lastly, the gas fees are reasonable as we are setting the price for our Genesis collection NFTs at 88Matic a piece and the Polygon Gas fees only amount to a small percentage of this minting price.
What platforms and applications are available for viewers to watch their animals?
Our TV Channel is available on various platforms depending on your region: e.g. Xumo, Rakuten, DStv, Samsung TV Plus, Huawei, or on our WildEarth apps available on the Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon fireTV, Roku, LG Content Store, and available watch directly on wildearth.tv.
