A small organization asking to be trusted with other people's money owes them a page like this one. Most visitors will never open it. It is written for the three who will.
GHRI is a Galápagos-based nonprofit initiative. Incorporation as an Ecuadorian Fundación is in progress; we expect registration to complete in late 2026, and the registration number and constitutive documents will be published here as soon as they exist.
Two organizations do this work, and they are deliberately separate.
Galápagos Habitat Restoration Institute is a nonprofit. Its mandate is the physical removal of invasive species and the restoration of endemic habitat. It does not manufacture or sell anything.
Galápagos Bio-Valorización is a commercial company, currently being constituted, wholly responsible for what happens to removed biomass — the mushroom, paper, craft, biochar and grazing routes described on the main page. Every decision about products, markets and pricing belongs to it and not to the Institute.
They are connected by a written agreement assigning a fixed share of GBV's gross revenue to GHRI restoration work. The agreement will be published on this page once executed. The separation exists so that no grant given for habitat restoration can be spent on commercial production, and so that the question of which plants come out of the ground is never decided by which ones sell.
GHRI's board will be constituted as part of the incorporation now under way, and is expected to be seated by the end of 2026. It will comprise a majority of members independent of the founder and of Galápagos Bio-Valorización, including at least one member resident in Galápagos and one with conservation science expertise. Names, affiliations and the founding governance documents will be published here on constitution. Until then, decisions rest with the founder, which is precisely why the conflict-of-interest position below is stated in advance rather than afterwards.
GHRI's founder holds interests in the commercial development of products made from removed invasive biomass, through Galápagos Bio-Valorización. That relationship is central to how the model is meant to work, so we treat it as something to disclose rather than manage quietly.
Three specific exposures follow from it, and we state them plainly. Grant funds raised for restoration must not subsidize commercial production. Equipment purchased with grant funds must be assigned to a named entity and accounted for. And the entity that applies for a regulatory permit must be the entity that operates under it. Each is being addressed through the service agreement and asset register being drawn up alongside incorporation, and the resulting documents will be published here.
GHRI will adopt a written conflict-of-interest policy requiring disclosure and recusal on any related-party decision, and will publish it here alongside the revenue-share instrument. Family relationships among key personnel are disclosed to funders as a matter of course.
Some of what GHRI and Galápagos Bio-Valorización intend to do requires authorization that does not yet exist. We set out the position in full rather than summarizing it favourably.
Edible fungi. Cultivating oyster mushrooms on blackberry substrate requires importing a fungal strain into Galápagos.
We plan on the assumption that this runs into 2027. Nothing will be imported or inoculated before authorization is granted, and no funding has been sought on the basis that it already has been.
What is not affected. Removal, restoration, in vitro propagation of endemic species, pulp and paperboard, wood and craft, biochar, and virtual-fencing grazing trials involve no biological import and are not subject to this hold. They constitute the majority of the work described on this site.
GHRI publishes its funding sources and, once it has a full financial year, its annual accounts. Applications are listed below with their status, whether or not they succeed.
| Funder | Submitted | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund | June 2026 | Under review |
| Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco | June 2026 | Pre-application submitted |
| Galápagos Conservancy — Small Grants | June 2026 | Under review |
| Conservation, Food & Health Foundation | June 2026 | Not funded |
Field protocols, removal and yield data, and the results of every trial we run — including the ones that fail. Replication is the only form of impact a project this size can honestly claim.