Giving Compass' Take:

• Phil McKenna reports on the UN's draft update to a global biodiversity treaty that aims to solve two global challenges at once by protecting critical wildlife habitat and carbon sinks.

• How can donors contribute to conservation efforts? What can be done to curb the effects of climate change? What is being done to protect endangered species and biodiversity around the world?

• Here's how the Trump administration's policies are fueling the extinction crisis. 

A new United Nations proposal calls for national parks, marine sanctuaries and other protected areas to cover nearly one-third or more of the planet by 2030 as part of an effort to stop a sixth mass extinction and slow global warming.

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity released the proposed targets on Monday in a first draft of what is expected to become an update to the global treaty on biodiversity later this year. It aims to halt species extinctions and also limit climate change by protecting critical wildlife habitat and conserving forests, grasslands and other carbon sinks.

Ecologists hailed the plan as a good starting point, while simultaneously urging that more needs to be done.

"We will prevent massive extinction of species and the collapse of our life support system," said Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, of the draft. "But it's not enough. We need half of the planet in a natural state."

Read the full article about protecting our earth's habitats by Phil McKenna at Inside Climate News.