Seven years ago, the Associação Natureza Portugal (ANP) was created in Portugal, which worked in collaboration with WWF and whose action is now continued by WWF Portugal, shared the executive director of the national organisation, Ângela Morgado.

"WWF Portugal emerged because of ANP's partnership with WWF, which showed it had the conditions to become a national office of the international network", said Ângela Morgado to Lusa, recalling that the organisation worked for many years with Portugal through the WWF Mediterranean regional programme, with the action being transferred to ANP/WWF for the last seven years.

The creation of the ANP with a cooperation agreement with WWF served to give time to solidify its position, said the executive director.

"There were seven of us and today we are 34. We started with an operation worth 350 thousand euros and now we have an operation worth around two million euros per year, and we have also solidified our entire organisational structure and procedures for excellence in project management", she added.

In response to the invitation from WWF to create a national office, Ângela Morgado said that last week the collaboration contract was terminated and an agreement was signed for the national organisation of the WWF network, creating the organization WWF Portugal.

“We changed the company name and changed one or two paragraphs in the statutes (…), we also changed the way we collaborated with the network, from a cooperation agreement we ended up with an entity agreement, a national office and from now on we are launching a brand awareness campaign”, he said.

Angela Morgado stressed that in terms of work, they will continue what has already been achieved by ANP. “What will change is the power of our brand. We believe that we will benefit from this clarification and the strength that the logo has; we will only use the panda logo.”

In the seven years of ANP, 90 projects were developed and implemented and despite ANP is disappearing, WWF Portugal remains, Ângela Morgado, says, in a statement released today, that this is “a historic moment for environmentalism in Portugal”.

Kirsten Schuijt, executive director of WWF International, stated, quoted in the same document, that she is proud that Portugal is now part of the WWF network of offices as a national office, a recognition that is “more than deserved”.

To mark the change, the “Pet Friends” campaign was created, based on the idea that in general terms people had an object that they grew up with, such as a stuffed animal, and that in more than 75% of cases, this object represented an animal.

The campaign's message is that if the stuffed animals were by these people's side, now is the time to help “the more than 800 endangered species in Portugal”.

As part of the campaign, and for World Wildlife Day, 112 stuffed animals will be left “loose” in some Lisbon Metro carriages this morning and can be taken home by anyone who finds them.

WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) was founded in 1961 and is today one of the largest and most respected independent conservation organisations, with more than five million supporters and an active network in more than 100 countries.