Twenty years & a model that works.

Our Founder Emma Clifford was born in southern England in 1970, in a home where rescuing animals from factory farms was a way of life. That early exposure shaped her worldview from the ground up. By her teenage years, she was an active animal rights advocate, and what began as a personal conviction had become a professional calling.

In 1995, she moved to the United States and built her career at some of the country’s most respected animal welfare organizations. It was through that network that she first learned what was happening in the Galapagos Islands: dogs and cats were being poisoned as a method of population control. She knew there had to be a better way.

In 2004, Emma brought the first Animal Balance veterinary team to the Galapagos for the first sterilization campaign. The approach was novel: high-quality, high-volume sterilization delivered by a mobile veterinary team, in one of the world’s most remote and ecologically sensitive environments. Sea Shepherd provided the ship to transport the team and their supplies to the islands, and later donated that same vessel to the Galapagos National Park.

The mission had begun.